Invictus
by Marchwriter
Summary: Forces conspire to lure Elrohir back into a nightmare: his estranged friend and captain, their Orc guide, and the hidden evil in Moria's depths that threatens the very security of the Elven realms.
1. Prologue

**Introductory Author's Note: **Hello and welcome, readers! This story is part of the Invictus series, the full listing of which can be found on my profile, and begins with _the Ides of March. _The story directly preceding this one is _Dwimmerlaik_. However, it can stand alone if you want to give it a whirl by itself. I welcome questions, comments, and criticisms of all kinds, so don't be shy and enjoy!

**Disclaimer / Note on Languages**: I'm only playing in Tolkien's sandbox. Any and all Elvish dialogue is borrowed from the Sindarin Dictionary copywritten 1999-2002 by Didier Willis and Ardalambion with thanks.

_Invictus_

**Prologue **

_ I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! __We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee; __And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, __Has awakened in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die. _

_-W.B. Yeats _

_Imladris, 2510 T.A. _

The tremors seized her hands again. Celebrían calmly set her tea down and squeezed the medal in her left hand tight, tight, but that did not alter the vision outside her bedroom window.

The holly tree was dead.

Its berries hung, still and desiccated, like drops of old blood. Glossy leaves shriveled on their stalks. The bark atrophied before her eyes, its silver hue leaching out through the roots. A twisted, ugly thing it seemed now. Something rotten in its core had withered it from the inside out. She stared at it, almost believing that if she did so long enough, she might see some glimmer of life return, some flicker of hope that it would bloom like its male counterpart.

Two taps sounded in her chamber.

Her hands jerked, the medal dropping into her lap. Someone was outside her door. She stared at the brass handle. She had forgotten to lock it. It would do no good to shout, to tell them to go away. They came anyway. They would take her. They would—

The door opened a fraction. "Am I disturbing you?"

"Elrohir." She sank onto a cushion, dizzy and dry-mouthed at the reassuring sight of her firstborn. She cleared her throat. "Not at all. Your company is infrequent as your brother's of late. Stop lingering there and come in properly."

"Are you cold?" He had noticed her shivering. He fetched a wrap from her trunk and draped it over her shoulders before she could answer. "The twilight brings a slight chill with it this eve."

"I had not realized." The lamb's wool brought warmth even if the weft lay a little crooked. Her daughter would make a skillful weaver. She glanced down at her hands, still tightly clasped. They had stilled, blessedly.

Elrohir roved about the room, lighting candles, banking the fire, adjusting the already-neat vases of ferns and forget-me-nots strewn in the corners and on top of her writing desk. He shook his head over the pittance she had nibbled out of her supper.

But when he moved to fasten the casements, she restrained him. "The wind is in the West tonight and quite mild."

His gaze met hers for the first time, and she could see him measuring her words, weighting them with more importance than simple enjoyment of a gentle wind. He left the shutters open.

"You have not eaten much," he observed, lightly reproving.

She summoned a smile. "When a platter is heaped so high, a lady may only make a small indent lest her girdle prove inadequate for its task."

He was not put off. He was too like his father when he did not wish to be stayed from a point. "You need to keep up your strength."

"I slept much today," she said, lifting her chin a little. He would not speak down to her as if she were the child.

Unlike his father, he knew better than to press her but glanced sideways at the four-poster monstrosity, far too wide and lonely for her now that Elrond slept down the hall to give her peace. Or so he said. Its eiderdown was not so much as ruffled. It hadn't been slept in for weeks. To forestall further chiding, she lifted the medal from her lap and held it up for him to see.

Much handling had worn its foliate edges touchstone-smooth, but its artisan had ensured it would withstand the test of time, lacing a touch of copper through the gold-encased mallorn leaf. By habit her fingertips found and traced the talismanic runes writ deep in its surface. The slow, easy movements soothed her.

"_Sadro Avorn._" Elrohir winced at the words even as he read them.

There was a question behind his averted eyes, in his stiffened shoulders, tight mouth. His hands, as long and fine as his father's, twitched reflexively as if snatching at something he could not quite grasp. She waited.

"Is it numbered among your things to take with you?" he asked at last.

It was not the question she'd expected. If she'd expected anything. From the still-troubled expression on his face, it was not the question he'd intended to ask either.

She answered honestly. "It is not mine to take. Not any longer."

He seemed somewhat mollified by this. "Then, if it be your wish, I shall endeavor to have it returned."

"He will not accept it." She pressed the medal into his palm, closing his fingers about it before he could jerk away. She had not lied to him when she'd said she had kept up her strength. "I wish you to keep it. And remember us both in brighter days."

"I shall remember _you_ without need of such a trinket. I need no reminder of _him_." He cast the leaf away as if it had scorched his hand. It tinged violently off the salver.

She sat very still for a moment, her empty hands clutching one another tightly. She had forgotten. Mellyrn could not take root here. The climate was too cold and dry. The leaf looked small and bereft against the salver's cold-silver glitter. One delicate corner had caved from the impact of its indelicate landing.

Such mistreatment of a gift would have hurt its giver.

But she could not, dared not think of him. How playfully he had slipped the leaf down her bodice, its pricking chill eased by the press of his palm. The warmth in his eyes unchanged even after she had accepted Elrond's silver band. The memory of him, a dull and constant ache, she had hidden away in a deep and secret grove of her heart after their final parting. There, thick, gold-flowering boughs arced over a dark forest river; where, even without a spring to draw from, it eroded what remained of its banks.

A breeze strayed through the open window.

The Sea. Its salt smell washed the forget-me-not from her lungs. And she knew she was not strong enough any longer to resist its insistent tug. She did not want to. Blindly, she reached out, not caring if her hands trembled.

Warmth engulfed her fingers, and she blinked the wet haze from her vision, tasting brackish spray on her lips. Elrohir knelt beside her couch, both of his hands clasping hers.

"I did not mean to upset you," he whispered, miserably.

She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed, the way she had when he'd been a small child. But he was not a child. Her hands disappeared in his. Chapped, blistered, scoured, nicked. The pads of his fingers alone retained their softness. Nails clean but quick-bitten. Despite her endless admonishments, that habit, alone of his childhood, stuck firmly.

"If only our hearts proved as easy to govern as our words, my son," she murmured, stroking his hair back from his face.

Elrohir looked away. "Perhaps then, words would prove warier. Or hearts more wanton."

She remained by the window long after the door closed behind him and watched the darkness swallow the holly tree.

**Translation**

_-Sadro Avorn: _Sindarin equivalent of _Semper Fi_ (lit: _sadron_ w/ dropped pronoun suffix for "faithful" and _avorn_ meaning "staying, fast"). The motto of the Lothlórien guard

-_Mellyrn_: plural of "mallorn," massive, beautiful trees that grow only in Lothlórien

**Canon Convention**

-_On Rings_: among the Elves, silver rings were betrothal rings, later re-exchanged between the bride and groom for gold


	2. Chapter One: The Two Travelers

**A/N: **After innumerable revisions, repeated hair-ripping, and endless cups of tea to spur me through those early morning yet precious writing hours, I have a new chapter! I pray it will not be Christmas before the next one. In the meantime, wish me luck, enjoy this, and don't be shy about letting me know what you think.

For those interested, there's also a new link at the bottom of my profile page to an Invictus-inspired painting by the extraordinarily talented Ebe Kastein. Please drop her a comment if you can. She deserves all accolades.

Best,

Marchwriter

**Chapter One: The Two Travelers **

_A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends._

-Arabian Proverb

_Imladris, 2993 T.A. _

Stillness lay over the wood, turgid and listless with the approach of thunder. The leaves hung limp on their branches. Only here and there did a dim shaft of sunlight manage to pierce muted shades to glint treacherously off buckle and blade and filigreed bow.

The damp loam muffled Elrohir's movements and those of his scouts as they slithered into their chosen concealments along the embankment that rose from either side of the road. Waves of amber bracken undulated like the heaving of the sea then silenced; tranquility returned to the stretch of road as if nothing more than a strong wind had passed.

Elrohir, crouched behind a sycamore, adjusted his sword hilt so it did not grind so uncomfortably against his ribs and made sure he knelt in deep shadow. It would not do to be revealed too soon. His heart thumped against his tunic, so loud he wondered if his men might hear it and mistake it for fear.

From where he knelt, he had a clear view of the road, its pale length the only focal point in the early dusk. There was nothing on it yet. Around them, the sunlit shafts turned copper then dun then disappeared altogether as a wind out of the east stirred the canopy above them.

Restless shiftings accompanied the wind and a hiss that was not the voice of leaves caught his ear off to the right.

"Any darker and I'll not be able to see my hand in front of my face, much less get a shot off. What's taking so long?"

"Patience, young one." A lower voice answered.

"I'm starting to take root as is. Lalaith and Tathariel are sneaking moon-eyes at each other again—let the enemy ride right under them. Look at that, felt rain on the back of my neck just then."

"And the enemy will find you first, Aear, if you do not hold your tongue," Elrohir hissed in the direction of the voice.

"Apologies, Captain."

Elrohir could not truly blame the young one for his excited babble, particularly after the long stretch of inactivity they had endured of late, one that had even the older warriors itching, but Elrohir would rather have his tongue cut out than risk their position.

Quiet fell again, and with its resumption, Elrohir heard the sound he'd been straining for: the call of a pair of linnet birds flying home to roost. Elrohir cleared his throat and piped a short few notes.

Moments later, he felt more than saw the two shadows drop from the tree beside him and crouch close enough that he could feel the eager heat from their bodies, smell the sweat on their skin. The fingers of one touched his forearm and spelled out what she had seen in the efficient and silent patois of scouts.

_Two. Well-armed. Horse. _

Lips brushed Elrohir's ear, and a warm, moist breath buffeted his neck. "Already past the border by the time we picked up their trail. They found the path." Her murmur supplied the note of indignation and alarm her fingers would not have.

Elrohir smiled grimly and reached for the scout's arm. _When? _

A squeeze on his forearm. _Now_.

A raindrop struck the corner of his eye and dripped icily into his collar, but Elrohir did not so much as twitch, all his senses leaning towards the curve in the road. The branches creaked almost in warning as the first sounds of hoof falls, the jingle of harness, the creak of worn leather reached his ears. A large, dark shape halved by tree trunks and then it turned.

Two men, as the scout had reported, and a horse. Though bleached from days of weather, long wear, and sweat, their strange-cut garments and foreign gear were easily recognizable as not Northern. The saddle sat very high on the horse's back and was a faded azure blue, nearly purple, richly edged with gold embroidery though the pad beneath was of humbler make and had been roughly stitched sometime recently. The reins had scarlet and gold tassels sewn onto them which swayed with the horse's gait. The animal itself was a beautiful, leggy coal-black gelding without so much as a white whisker. Where such rough-used men had acquired the coin for such a beast was anyone's guess, and Elrohir did not like the implications of its leathery mouth and foam-flecked coat though its flanks were blessedly free of spur scars.

Its handlers were no less unusual though little could be discerned of their kindred beneath headcloths and robes pulled close against the oncoming rain. One seemed to be injured or exhausted to illness for he rode the horse, stooping so low in the saddle his chin almost touched the gelding's neck. His companion had gathered the horse's rein up in one fist, the other resting on the hilt of a battered but capable-looking curved blade protruding from under his cloak.

Of the two, he was the more wicked-looking and the more alert. Lean and hungry as a rangy dog, he stood taller than Elrohir by an unsettling handspan. His robes and dirty leathers, though long and loose, failed to conceal sinewy hands and broad shoulders. As he strode before the horse, his head constantly turned, scanning the path ahead and the woods to either side. All Elrohir could make of his face was a sliver of filthy skin and pale eyes gazing narrowly over a wrap of earthy cloth.

In the held-breath space as the horse passed abreast of his and the scouts' position, Elrohir renewed his vow to never see evil enter his valley. Half-rising he eased his sword from its scabbard and let out the cajoling note of a dove.

At once, the call echoed up from a dozen places on all sides, and the horse-leader stopped dead, recognizing the sound of danger but not the direction whence it would come, until confirmation leapt out in the form of a grey and white-fletched arrow thudding point-first into the track a bare pace from his scarlet boots.

"You are surrounded," Elrohir barked out in the common tongue. "Take your hands from your weapons, and do not stir hand or foot."

Even as he spoke, his warriors stepped from the trees, bows creaking under the meaningful tension of arrows. Wisely, the horse's handler took his hand from his sword and dropped the reins of his mount. The man upon it did not move.

Elrohir picked his way downslope as Aear, the young warrior he had reprimanded, strode forward before his commander reached them and kicked the horse handler's legs out from under him.

"Down on the ground like the cur, you are, sirrah!"

The taller man remained on his knees, but his eyes had found Elrohir, who felt suddenly and strangely uncomfortable under their accusatory stare. But he shook it off and approached.

"You are trespassing upon elven lands," he said, indicating the curve in the lane. "Your road lies back the way you came, beyond the river. You can go no further."

There was no ready capitulation as many Men facing the ends of barbed arrows would have given. In fact, there were no signs of comprehension at all. What little could be seen of the man's face was expressionless though his unusual stare never left Elrohir's lips.

"Do you speak the common tongue?" Elrohir asked, uncertainly, after a moment of silence. "Do you understand?"

No recognition. Nothing. Or…was it a trick of the twilight, or were those peculiar eyes narrowed in amusement?

Aear snorted and nudged the kneeling man harder than etiquette strictly demanded. "He does understand, my lord, he is just too stubborn for his own good. Where did you steal this horseflesh, vagabond?" He ran an eye over the beast and up the leg of the other man atop it. "And you, villain, climb down at once lest you wish to be summarily filled with our shot."

When the man did not comply fast enough, Aear seized the rider's calf. The next instant, he was sprawled facedown in the dirt nearly between the horse's legs, the edge of a knife against his neck, the first man's knee planted squarely between his shoulder blades. None of them had even seen him move.

Bows moaned with tension, but the delicate pressure on their comrade's back and windpipe prevented the Imladrian warriors from executing swift recompense.

"Hold," Elrohir rapped out, hot ire making his hands itch to raise his sword. He'd been a fool to let Aear get so close.

The stranger's headcloth had slipped, unveiling a ratty tumble of hair that looked like wheat rained down in the fields and left to rot. Curious on a man dressed in Eastern garb. But curious or no, he had a knife to one of his ambushers' throats.

Elrohir inhaled sharply through his nose, fighting for calm above the pounding of blood in his veins. "Release him, or we will shoot you."

It was an empty threat. None of them had a shot that would kill the man fast enough to prevent him plunging his knife into Aear's exposed neck; and the man knew it too for his eyes—grey above the kohl lines—laughed at him, their darkness sparkling with unconcealed delight. And again, a strange, niggling sense swept across Elrohir's mind like rain-heavy clouds over a field.

"What do you want?"

And, to his utter surprise, he received an answer: "A more courteous welcome for my comrade and me, a bed of eiderdown, and a ewer of warm water apiece. We have not passed through leagues of wilderness only to earn the names of 'cur' and 'vagabond' from you and your whelps, who have more acorns between their ears than knowledge of woodcraft. If such is how Imladris trains their striplings to be soldiers, they leave much wanting."

His speech was tainted with guttural overtones of the East and South, and yet his diction and syntax revealed a far more Northern-cultured mind and sense of language than one might expect from such a highwayman.

"Proudly spoken for one who is neither," Elrohir returned coldly, stung by the comment about his warriors and those mocking eyes. "But courtesy and hospitality are extended only to those who come without bearing arms and ill-intent into this realm."

"Arms we bear for those without them on these roads are little better than lambs straying afield among the wolves and meet a similar fate. As for intent, ill or otherwise, that is for you to judge. And I pray that you possess your father's keen eye, _Lord_ Elrohir, and see more clearly than your men lest you come to rue it."

Elrohir fought to keep the startle from his face. "You have the advantage of me, _sir_, for you seem to know a great deal of me and mine and yet I know nothing of you."

A long smile crept up one side of the man's face. His eyes crinkled with it.

Squirming uncomfortably, Aear coughed dust from his lips and spat. "Lord, he spouts dwimmer-speech to deceive you. Kill this man quickly ere he—" A twitch of the knifeblade silenced him.

Elrohir could feel the eyes of his men darting increasingly nervous glances between him and the pair on the ground. If he did not choose soonest, they would take matters into their own hands. It would take but a slip of a finger on a bowstring to end the matter now.

"What say you, silent one?" he asked, addressing the rider who had sat throughout this entire exchange. "Your life hangs upon the same string as your comrade, yet you say nothing."

The hood lifted as if with an effort to regard him, but for the shadows, Elrohir could only glimpse a sliver of wan cheekbone, heavily bristled, and two, gleaming points that might have been eyes.

"I have earned whatever fate you would deign to give me, Lord," said a soft baritone voice, "for I took my leave without leave and have seen and done much since last I trespassed in these fair woods. It is not to be wondered at if I am recognized only as a villain."

The first man added nothing to his comrade's admission, but the tightening around his eyes bespoke flickerings of exasperation and voiceless protest. Or impatience at this prolonged parlay.

"Lower your hood, so that I may see your face," Elrohir ordered, "and you, man, if you are of good will as you claim, release him and stand."

Aear scuttled hurriedly out from under the blade the instant it lifted, rubbing the bloody nick in his throat. But Elrohir had eyes only for the man on the horse whose hood falling down across his shoulders revealed a tangle of hair dark and thick as briar, faded with winter grey, a craggy face worn with exhaustion and etched with lines of sun, hard-living and the peculiar waning of men approaching their age. The sight of it made Elrohir's heart unfurl with longing and sudden recognition.

A long wind poured through the trees, the scent of thunder pungent and sharp. It cleared Elrohir's mind of the last vestiges of hesitation and doubt.

"Lower your bows, all of you," he commanded, forcing the words past a constriction unaccountably lodged in his throat. He quickly stooped for the horse's reins, hoping the roughness of his voice might be explained away by the ground muffling it. "A son of Imladris has returned home."

* * *

Sharp spats of rain hurled themselves raggedly against the tall study windows like the army of Angband before the gates of Gondolin.

Three glasses of plum brandy, distilled from the best of the summer fruit, sat on Elrond's dark secretary, all three untouched. Elrohir took up his and tipped a parsimonious mouthful down his throat for it eased the clammy chill the rain had left on his skin. Aragorn made no such attempt to accept the proffered drink and implied hospitality. Instead, he groped in his damp tunic for his pipe and tobacco pouch. Silence reigned while he filled the bowl and tamped the tobacco down with the broad edge of his thumb for a smooth draw. But he did not light it.

After a long moment, he spoke towards the bowl. "I do not know how many of the rebellion escaped the slaughter. I do not know how many found their way to the dungeons beneath the palace. I do not know what became of Jalal when they took him away. I do know a woman can be as cruel as any man. As any orc, for that matter. We were lucky to escape with our lives."

He ran a hand, seamed with grime, over his face and through his hair, every sinew and line of his body bespeaking a weariness of more than flesh. "The South is lost. What hope Gondor had in reclaiming its lands or negotiating an accord with its ruler has passed. Or, at least, will not come while the Dark Tower stands."

Elrond, who had sat silent with the tips of his long fingers together while Aragorn imparted in brief the news of his considerable journeys, looked over them gravely but did not seem to see the room before him. "Galadriel warned me your journey had been a hard one. I did not know how hard."

A crooked smile split Aragorn's face like the stroke of a sword. "I did not choose my life for its ease."

Elrond returned the smile wanly.

One of the shadows in the corner stirred and spoke for the first time. "A hard and a trying and a fruitless for the most part. Our horse is not the only one who has endured long miles and rough handling this day. If we are quite finished here—?"

"Not just yet, Captain. I thank you for a little more of your patience," Elrond said to the speaker, mildly but without looking away from the grey-faced man slumped across from him. "Elrohir, would you fetch the candles from my top drawer? I fear we shall find ourselves in darkness soon."

Haldir accepted his thanks with a stifled noise at the back of his throat that directed towards a lesser personage than Lord Elrond of Imladris might have emerged as a groan of complaint. "Elrohir, while you're up, get me another glass."

Elrohir stiffened at being thus addressed, but diplomacy forbade an expedient denial. Instead, he lit the candles first and then attended the captain's glass, which had already been filled more than once during this interview.

"Your drink, Captain," he said, thrusting it into his hand with the bare minimum of civility.

His former mentor accepted it with an incline of his head though the rakish curve of an eyebrow suggested he knew how much the elf-knight resented being ordered about like a green recruit. Carefully smoothing his expression, Elrohir straightened a candle in its holder and returned to his place by the windows, but he could not quite prevent the prickle that itched across his skin like lightning.

"What news of Gondor since you journeyed south?" Elrond asked Aragorn.

"It stands yet." Haldir answered, pushing away from the sideboard to loom over the back of Aragorn's chair.

Elrond's lips thinned at the curt reply, but Elrohir turned sharply towards him. "That is encouraging news. Though, I believe, my father would know the _manner_ of its standing upon learning its enemies have joined the one Enemy."

Haldir, taking no note of his tone, shrugged and drained his glass in a long swallow. "What news we have will be of no use to you since it is more likely to have reached here before us and more besides. The last courier we met bore news of Ecthelion's firstborn succeeding his father's place."

"Denethor." Aragorn recalled, though he did not lift his eyes from where the candles reflected in the dark mirror of polished wood. "A valiant man. He will serve Gondor well."

"He is capable for his breed, I suppose," Haldir said, glancing down at the dark head. "If a little overproud in his bearing and unwilling to listen to the counsel of others, however sensible."

"Many share in that vice," Elrohir offered, a little pointedly.

Haldir's lip curled, and he dipped his head lightly as if to concede Elrohir's point.

"A man may be excused a little pride and stubbornness," Elrohir continued. "He mourns still his wife and has the care of their sons."

Aragorn's eyes left the candleflame for the first time in minutes and fixed him with a hawkish stare. "What do you mean he mourns her? Finduilas is dead?"

"Five years now," Elrohir said with equal disconcertion and not a little sadness. He had not known the young woman, taken before her time even by Men's measure, but all accounts spoke of her fairness, her generosity of spirit, her love for her two sons, and her quiet longing for the sea. "Surely, you knew that?"

Aragorn shook his head like a man sleepwalking. "It has been long since we passed through the lands of civilized men. No news of Gondor has reached me since I departed it."

Over his head, Haldir averted his eyes and said nothing.

Elrohir glanced at him. He had not expected this. Not for the first time, he wished for Elladan's peerless presence, but his brother was far abroad in the company of Gildor's men, and none knew when he would return. "He has two sons to him now—the first already being groomed for a high captaincy and the Stewardship."

"Boromir," Aragorn recalled, his eyes distant. "He would be a young man by now."

"Yes."

Elrohir did not add what else he had heard. Some twenty years after Estel's departure from Rivendell, a scribe upon errantry—or rather, a rumormonger with a pen—had brought news of the South: the ostentatious displays among lords, the political shifts, the quarrel between such-and-such a personage. The scribe piously added he preferred truth over the false gilding of rumor though his eyes carried an acquisitive gleam of their own when he related the current difficulty afflicting Gondor's heir. Was it not enough, he said, that a man must stand second to a stranger in his father's love? Was it not injury to insult that one must come second in the wife's as well? For the favored captain of Ecthelion, a mysterious man by all accounts, was often seen to walk and talk with the steward's new law-daughter, who was now evincing obvious signs of her delicate condition.

_Of course, _the scribe continued, swallowing the ale offered him as easily as his listeners swallowed his words_, I do but speak the truth as it was told to me by others. And I have it from an unimpeachable source that Denethor is convinced the child is not his. And who would contradict so keen-eyed a man in matters of this sort?_ Elrohir, relieved that his low-drawn hood hid his face, had departed before any other poison could fill his ears.

But now, looking at Aragorn's stricken countenance, Elrohir could not help wondering what the dead young woman had been to his foster brother.

"How?" Aragorn whispered after a moment's silence.

"She had been ill for some time. When her strength permitted, she liked to stand at the base of Ecthelion's tower and look out towards the sea. The wind blows strongly there, and she took a chill," Elrohir explained.

Aragorn did not so much nod as drop his head onto his breast as if overcome. Elrohir wanted to touch his shoulder, to squeeze it hard if only to feel the shift of bone and muscle under his fingers, and not the intangible shadow of a ghost.

With an obvious effort, Aragorn picked up his pipe, and, though it took several tries, finally set it alight. "I will not intrude on your hospitality long, my lord," he said to Elrond, coughing around a breath of smoke too hastily drawn. "Two, three days. A sennight at the latest to obtain new gear and suitable provisions that will get me to the Angle. I have been long away from my kin."

"You are welcome to stay as long as you need, Aragorn," Elrond said with a note of cool reproof in his voice. "This house is always open to you and always has been."

Elrohir lowered his eyes to the scarlet carpet, unable to watch his foster brother and his father treat one another like lords of allied but distant realms. Arwen's presence hung between them as poignant as a weighted blade over their necks.

"Then, if there is nothing else, I would sleep. Haldir is right. It has been a long day." Without waiting for Elrond's nod, Aragorn got to his feet and left the room, trailing a wisp of grey over his shoulder.

None went after him or spoke a word either to excuse Aragorn's sudden departure or towards each other. After a moment, Haldir set down his empty glass and, making a brief obeisance in Lord Elrond's direction, trailed after Aragorn.

Elrohir caught him up in the corridor.

"You will stay in your usual quarters, I presume?" he asked without looking at him.

"No. The lodge hasn't burned to the ground, has it?" the captain asked with the air of one who expects an answer to the affirmative.

"Elladan has kept it for you."

"Good of him."

They walked a few steps in silence then Haldir plucked at his sleeve. "Can you recommend a good seamstress at this hour? I need a new tunic, and this filth burned."

Once he was sure they were out of earshot of his father, Elrohir stopped, and Haldir looked at him questioningly.

"You knew," Elrohir accused. "You knew of her death, and you did not tell him."

Haldir sighed. The rain-shadows made strange shapes across his face. "I…heard a rumor."

"And you said nothing. Since you seem to have had your ear to the ground, how well did he know her?" Elrohir asked, attempting to sound casual, but the shock of pain in Aragorn's eyes gave his voice a sharpened edge. What confidences might Aragorn have exchanged with a trusted friend throughout the dark night-hours? What secrets other than his destiny did he cleave to, perhaps dearer than he cleaved to Arwen? What would become of her if—?

Haldir's eyes, grey as winter, hid his thoughts like snowfall and regarded Elrohir as if the captain were weighing just what—if anything—to tell him. Even now, after all these years and the manner of their last parting, they still gave him the feeling that Haldir was probing his inner depths as they had since the very first days of his training under the marchwarden.

"Are you asking me, Elrohir," he said after an eternity, "if Estel remains constant despite being parted for more than twenty years from the woman he loves with nothing more to sustain him than a brief meeting and a briefer promise set so far in the future one dares not hope for it lest it prove false at the bitterest end?"

Elrohir rallied. "They plighted their troth at that meeting. That is no small promise."

"Granted. And yet, a Man may prove less willing to endure the march of years than we." Haldir leaned his shoulders against the wall and gazed down the corridor in the direction Aragorn had taken. "Winter encroaches on his age, and yet the high hopes of his youth have not blossomed as fulsomely as he desires. And with this fresh trouble with Harad, they wither on the bough. Do you think he will have Arwen to wife, the wife of an itinerant ranger, not a king? Will he drag her into the wilds with him if his hopes founder? Do you not think he would rather release her—release them both— from such a promise than see her shamed?"

"You never could answer a question if there was some means to evade it," Elrohir snarled.

"Nay, I but preface my own," Haldir said, unmoved by Elrohir's anger. "Do you truly believe he would waste all the years he has bent on this single purpose, spurn the love your family has ever given him, and break a worthy heart all for the sake of some tumble with a woman he has no right to claim?"

Elrohir's shoulders stiffened under the blow. He resented the implication that he somehow mistrusted or doubted Aragorn's motives which had always been clear and pure and focused where Arwen was concerned. He had no reason to think that Aragorn had acted in any way untoward while abroad and far from home.

_And yet…and yet…_

"_Others_, who I also once considered above reproach, have done so and to great harm," he retorted, relieved that his words did not tremble. "I would not see Aragorn—or my sister—drawn onto the same deadly path as my mother was."

For that, Haldir had no reply, a feat in and of itself. But Elrohir suddenly realized he had no desire to press his advantage. The taste of victory soured to ashes in his mouth. He wanted to leave, to disentangle himself from this situation that he'd never wanted to broach in the first place. He and Haldir had not been on speaking terms for the better part of four-hundred years, and their last venture towards this particular subject had ended with Elrohir putting a fist in the captain's jaw. The same wariness lurked in Haldir's eyes now as it had then, and Elrohir found he did not want to face them.

Without another word, he spun on his heel, leaving the captain rooted in the midst of the hall.

With every stride that pulsed up his legs, every step he placed between himself and the source of it, a little of the poisonous anger left him, and by the time he shut the door of his rooms behind him, he was thoroughly drained. Resting his forehead against the cool wood, he closed his eyes only to see grey ones boring into them behind the black of his eyelids.

With a furious burst of energy, he hurled himself across the room and flung open the trunk at the foot of his bed, the lid cracking satisfyingly against the bedposts. On his knees, he rifled through the contents, casting winter cloaks, unmended boots, strips of leather, linens, a book of Noldorin poetry he had always meant to read, a stack of letters and correspondence from a friend indiscriminately aside. At the bottom, amongst a pile of scattered arrow heads, he found the coffer.

With a flick of silver catches, the trinket tumbled into his palm.

The golden leaf had lost none of its luster despite its long confinement. Its blended copper and gold still gleamed. The words still cut as deeply into its body. Elrohir ran his fingers over the dent in its curling leaf, its only flaw. He had always intended, despite her injunction, to return it to its rightful possessor, but something had always held him back, some vague uneasiness. Who could he trust to deliver it? What if it were lost? Would he send a note, explaining…? What on earth could he say? What did he have to say? It was not he who owed explanation.

In the end, it sat in the coffer, and in the end, he managed to forget that he still had it or, rather, he laid it aside in a dark chamber of his mind where he needn't worry about it. Until today.

Even the mere sight of him was enough. The all-too-familiar taste of anger stung the back of his throat. That tang of metal and salt as bitter as bile. When he had refused to join Elladan on his hunt, for the first time in centuries without regret, he had thought—or perhaps just desperately hoped—he had left it behind for good. Instead, his anger had found him, no matter where he hid.

The gold had warmed to his hands a little, and so bright was the metal, he could nearly conjure the exact shade of her hair that neither he nor his siblings had inherited. Dimmer came her strong profile and steely mouth that could unexpectedly soften with girlish laughter…her capable hands that could stitch a wound as easily as a torn tunic, that could wipe away tears as briskly as grease from smudged glass… The only tangible thing left of her was this. This remnant of her worst transgressions.

A pain in his hand checked this tide of brooding thought. His fingers had closed about the golden leaf, crushing the piece of metal until it bit deep into his palm, leaving its imprint on his skin. It needed returning. What better opportunity would he have than this while the captain was in residence?

Uncurling his fingers stiffly, he dropped it into the coffer and set it on his bedside table, wishing with all his heart he could tuck away the past as easily.


	3. Chapter Two: Ash and Ember

**Author's Notes: **Edited 12.23.12. Special thanks to Thorongirl, Ilaaris, LadyGreySun, Ragnelle, kestrels, Calenlass Greenleaf1, Sierra Leone, Elsendor, Nieriel-mithril, Valante, TheLauderdale, and ziggy3 for taking the time to review the first two chapters.

Best,

Marchwriter

**Chapter Two: Ash and Ember**

_Borders are scratched across the hearts of men, by __strangers__ with a calm, judicial pen, and when the borders bleed we watch with dread the lines of ink along the map turn red__._

~Marya Mannes

_Imladris, 15 October, in this year of 2993_

_To the most esteemed Lord of Erebor and restored King under the Mountain, Dain II son of Nain, greetings and goodwill from Master Elrond of Imladris and his folk. _

_As the season deepens in our valley, and the roads become ever more treacherous, it is to the advantage of both of our respective realms if this business at hand is concluded forthwith. _

_To that end, should the agreed-upon trade be subject to difficulty upon its journey—including fire, water damage, or outside attack of the servants of the Enemy (but excluding carelessness and thievery of persons responsible for the goods' safe transportation), it is agreed herein that both parties who have stake will hereby reduce by half all tariffs, and the cost of replacement, labor, and weregilds as may result from outside circumstances will be evenly divided, according to the agreement between the Mountain and Imladris laid out in full below…_

The blotting sand sifted across still-glistening ink, burying the carefully crafted words and reworked phrases beneath a pile of grey ash. Elrohir wiped his ink-stained fingers on a handkerchief and stood to stretch with a soft groan. Neck, back, fingers, legs, even his eyes ached from being forced to confine themselves to the form of a chair, the width of a secretary, the rigor of pen and ink and endless sheets of blank parchment while he pored over the last trade agreements of the season between Imladris and the newly-established King under the Mountain. Dain II was typical of dwarf-kind and notoriously difficult to negotiate with; he had delayed and demurred all summer. And now autumn was half-gone.

Elrohir washed his hands of the entire matter, figuratively and literally. Their coal, iron, and gemstones for Imladris' spices, linens, and wines. If the dwarves did not accept it, they would find this winter less comfortable than past ones. Forcing his cramped fingers around a stub of sealing wax, he picked up a candle to add his father's seal. The problem now would be finding a messenger to take it. With the season deepening quickly, fewer and fewer dared the mountain passes and the long, perilous journey between here and Erebor.

A draft caressed his spine, pricking the hairs on the back of his neck, yet the shutters and door were closed. It was as if someone had opened an invisible door or window in the walls.

_A threshold gaped, a starved mouth in a face of bony granite. The chill seeping from it was overpowering as if the blackness had breath and blood. It wanted to swallow him. It beckoned him forward with a crooked finger and spoke words to him in a tongue he did not understand. Low and throbbing and very far away, like a heartbeat, like a voice calling from beneath the earth, the sound of drums… _

The candle in Elrohir's hand jerked, splattering wax all over the fresh document and nearly setting it ablaze. Startled and disoriented, he gazed wildly around the room as if half-expecting to find that the dark door had opened in his chamber. It had not, of course. After the little flame licking along the parchment was extinguished and his pulse slowed to a more reasonable rhythm, he owned that he had been in this room for too long.

There were days when he wished his mother had given birth to Elladan first, then he would be the one closeted in close chambers, leaving Elrohir free to gallivant about the wilds with Gildor and his men for seasons at a time. He rubbed his face hard, trying to clear his head of the echoes of drums.

"Don't let me startle you."

Elrohir's head snapped up towards the doorway. As if conjured by his thoughts, there stood Elladan, fresh from the stables in muck and straw-caked boots with a damp and unfamiliar cloak draped over one arm. His clothes were threadbare, his hair pulled into a loose queue at his neck, his face a little gaunter, a little browner. But he grinned at Elrohir's surprise.

"Must you bring half the stables in along with your disreputable footwear?" Elrohir inquired.

"Well, that is a fine 'well met, brother. Your absence was felt by all and sundry. How glad I am to see you safe and sound!'" Elladan retorted in injured tones, tossing his filthy cloak across the back of an upholstered chair.

Elrohir scarcely noticed, the horror of the unknown door still strong in his mind. Whether it had been a vision or a result of fatigue and overwork, he could not tell, and the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he had actually _seen_ anything at all.

"You look a little queer. Are you all right?"

He looked up to find Elladan beside his chair, looking down at him with an expression that reminded him far too much of their father in its breadth of concern and anxious inquiry.

Immediately Elrohir sat up and relaxed his face into a bland smile, only his fingers' continued tread through his hair betraying the depth of his disconcertion. "I'm fine. A little tired."

"Have you shut yourself up in here for days?" Elladan cast an eye around the room, somewhat disordered with crumpled piles of parchment on every flat surface, empty ink bottles, slivers of broken quills and sharpened nibs. The flagstones before the fireplace were littered with ash and cinders, and a whole host of dreg-filled teacups aligned the windowsill.

"Well, if you had been here to give me a little aid, it might not have taken so long," Elrohir retorted, glancing down ruefully at the ruined document.

"Have you eaten?"

Elrohir rolled his shoulders noncommittally.

"Nor slept, either, by the look of you. You look dreadful." Only half-playfully.

"I have been otherwise occupied of late," Elrohir protested, resenting this rather hypocritical statement from his brother who looked as you would expect one who has roughed it in the wild for months at a time to look.

"Yes, tricky business those trade agreements," Elladan said with a sniff at the document that had taken him most of the day and now sat still smoking faintly. "Must make sure the linens are not mistaken for toadstools and all that."

Elrohir suppressed the urge to cast his eyes heavenward. "Spoken as one who has never had to write such in his life."

"You are surly when you're hungry." Elladan cuffed his shoulder, eliciting a surprised grunt from its owner. "Come! I must wash and change, but afterwards, we'll air you out a bit. A decent meal, a draught of wine and a little company will do wonders for you. Gildor's fellows are rounding up the lads in the barracks for a little homecoming celebration."

"No, thank you. Knowing you, I would not find myself able to stand ere nightfall. And a night of carousal I cannot afford. This needs to go out by the morning." It would take him the better part of the night to recopy the document. "And I must find a messenger to—"

Elladan dismissed his protests with a flick of his fingers and a sharper glance that had not quite lost all its concern. "It is _after_ nightfall now. Messengers won't go out until tomorrow morning at the earliest. You have plenty of time. I'll even deliver them to the courier myself, if you like. You are joining us."

Elrohir followed his brother through the door that adjoined their chambers and folded his arms in a feigned attitude of insouciance against the doorframe.

"Estel arrived while you were gone. He was not alone."

Elladan loosened his boot laces. "I know," There was a note of reproof in his voice. "_He _and Haldir were there to greet me in the courtyard."

Elrohir's gaze fixed on the chest at the foot of Elladan's bed.

Elladan must have sensed something in his silence for his other boot dropped to the floor with a thoughtful thump. "Is that why you shut yourself away? Because Haldir is here?"

After their initial, inauspicious encounter, Elrohir and Haldir had come to a tacit accord to avoid each other. A feat made difficult by the fact that both often sought the same places for diversion and amusement and the same persons with whom to socialize. If they did meet in passing, they spoke of small things with a civility polished by long habit under watchful eyes and ended the conversation as quickly as decency would allow—sometimes before.

But Elrohir tired quickly of such pretensions. It wasn't in him to feign amity and ease when he felt neither, and his own quarters offered ample privacy, space to think, and a means of distraction. Or so he told himself to keep from thinking about how narrow the walls seemed after three days, how tired he was of reading, and his indignation of having to hide. Was he not the heir of Imladris? Did he not have a right to walk about his own halls without fear of being discomfited?

But he did not leave his chambers.

However, explaining all this to Elladan, who viewed his feelings about the captain as something of an embarrassment, would only invite censure, accusations of stubbornness, or worse. So he said nothing.

"Elrohir," Elladan said in the kind of half-conciliating, half-patronizing tone one takes with a horse that refuses the bit, "It was long ago. How you can carry a quarrel for so long—You would think you would be grateful."

"Grateful!" Elrohir hissed, aghast. "_Grateful_? What on earth for? What has he ever done that you should feel grateful to him?"

"Our knighthoods, for one," Elladan retorted, calmly. "Or do you forget that he stood for us at our ceremony? That our skills and our swords are of his honing?"

"I like to think we had some little to do with it," Elrohir said with some asperity. "But that is the past, and it is not of the past that I would speak."

He advanced to the window in a pretext of examining the night, but the bright candlelight made a mirror of the glass. He stared at his reflection for a moment before offering, "He has appropriated the lodge for his use."

"The lodge he built, you mean?"

Elrohir ignored him. "A passel of young hunters and scouts have taken to spending their evenings there. Indulging in vulgar songs, violent tales, and fugitive liquor." From his own window, he could see the lights, and he had left the casements shut and locked to muffle the singing.

"You speak as if we were not guilty of the same when we were young." Elladan laughed, and the sound goaded Elrohir into turning abruptly.

"That is not the point! You may laugh, but you have not been here. It is not fitting for our soldiers to squander their time so, whatever leniency he allows his in Lórien. I would not have my men so poisoned with his habits."

"_Poisoned_?" Elladan echoed with an incredulous twitch of an eyebrow. "A little strong choice of words, don't you think?"

"Not at all. You know better than I how he ill-uses himself and, indeed, have told me as much."

Elladan shifted so that the bed slats creaked and was silent for a little. "If it distresses you, then tell him so. Bid him cease. You are marshal of the barracks after all—"

"Has your journey truly so fatigued you, or are you being deliberately obtuse?" Elrohir snorted. "He will not heed me."

Elladan had sense enough to concede this point. "If even Grandfather is at pains to manage him at times, I can see how you might flounder. But what can one do? He has always been a law unto himself. He is the way he is."

Elrohir returned to his perusal of the window, of the mirror-faces therein. Ever a wonder that two faces so alike could conceal minds so very different. "Always his champion, you are. One would think he had never done anything to injure anyone."

A sigh of long-standing frustration fetched up hard against his back.

"Elrohir, I do not want my first night home to be spoilt by bitterness and ill-feeling." Elladan's eyes caught and held his in the surface of the glass. "And I will not have you slandering him to his face."

"It is not slander if it is the truth," Elrohir murmured, tipping his chin up mutinously. "You would accuse me of poor memory, but you seem to have forgotten the court-martial you attended along with the rest of his transgressions."

Strangers' curious remarks regarding Imladris' Lady and her 'close companion' had circulated for years. Whoever saw them walking in the gardens, riding in the pine woods, or dancing on a festival night could not fail to mark the devoted friendship between them or the fact that the captain was more often seen in her company than her husband. The gossipmongers of the vale—whose numbers seemed to grow yearly—saw in every touch a stolen caress, every glance a promise of a midnight meeting, every soft word a vow of illicit love. Elrohir tried to dismiss them as tales spun by the idle and the envious and fiercely reprimanded those who dared call into question his friend's or his mother's honor in his ears. He dismissed even tentative questions put by unimpeachable friends. He put out of mind the way his mother and her friend had sprung apart when he once entered her rooms without announcing himself.

At the court martial, he stood as his status dictated in the front ranks with the rest of his brothers-in-arms. He remembered thinking even then that if Haldir looked at him once then he would know this was ridiculous, the product of jealousy and resentment and a thousand other things than truth. But Haldir never looked up—never once acknowledged either he or Elladan even when he passed them as the then-marshal's soldiers led him off to the courtyard.

Elladan's expression darkened with warning. "Yes, I attended that shameful farce—as did you—and you know as well as I, Angren had no love of Haldir—"

"I also know that Haldir did nothing to defend himself. He let them cut his sacred braids and lash him like a cur. If not for you, they would have broken his sword without him raising a whisper of protest. What is that if not proof of guilt? If not for Grandmother's unfathomable indulgence, he wouldn't have the commission he neglects now."

Elrohir had not realized he'd begun to pace from corner to corner until Elladan's next words brought him up short.

"Mother defended him."

The three words sparked the frayed edge of his temper. "_Of course_ she did! She _always_ did! Indeed, one wonders what manner of favors he plied her with to merit such _consideration_. For all the good it—"

But his brother's face checked the diatribe on Elrohir's tongue. It had closed, tight and hard and dark as a crevice through which he could not pass. He faltered and fell silent.

"It is well Father did not hear you say that," Elladan said with deliberate softness as if to underscore Elrohir's outburst. "Elrohir. I will not argue this again. I have no wish to grow angry with you, and I shall if you continue. I do not ask you to enjoy his company. I am asking you to let me enjoy yours. I am newly returned home and, for once, most of the people I love are here, whole, and desirous of feting my return properly with an entirely inappropriate amount of the vineyard's finest vintage. If you love me, give me this."

Without waiting for a reply, he jerked his tunic over his head, flung it in the direction of the wicker basket, and stalked into the bathchamber, shutting the door carefully behind him as if he did not quite trust himself not to slam it.

Faced with the implacable countenance of the wood grain, Elrohir deflated. Shame, cold and sickening, pricked the edges of his conscience. Earning Elladan's anger before his brother even had a chance to wash the dust of the road from his body was not how Elrohir had pictured their long-awaited reunion.

He sank slowly onto the edge of the quilt in his brother's former place, resting his elbows on his knees, and gazed unseeingly at the braided carpet.

Once again Haldir proved the loose string that threatened to unravel the weft of the family cloth. Harder words than these had been exchanged between he and Elladan over this very matter. But for all the times Elrohir had made his argument, had _craved_ an ally in his kin, Elladan refused to relinquish the tight-clutched imago of his childhood idol.

He did not understand, thinking Elrohir sought a suitable scapegoat for blame and cared little who it was. He did not consider that the blame might be well-deserved. It had nothing to do with the ugly rumors, the disgrace of the court-martial, the shame of the truth, or the long silence afterward without a _single_ word of explanation—though others would have considered such just enough cause for complaint. Even then, Elrohir might have thrown his arms around his captain's neck at their newest meeting, if not for the shadow of the grey sickroom. Elladan had not been able to abide the closeness or the smell, so it had fallen to Elrohir to administer to their mother after they brought her to Lórien for healing. Elladan had not seen their mother's eyes, darker and more full of pain than they'd ever been. Elladan had not counted the slow march of hours when she tossed and murmured in her sleep while their father stayed by her side and held her. Elladan had not watched her watch the empty doorway that always remained empty.

At times, especially now, Elrohir almost wished his brother's ignorance on himself that he might have such unshakable faith to steady him, that he might be free to believe that everyone was what you believed them to be, and the world was not the dark, unforgiveable place he knew it was.

When Elladan emerged an indefinable time later, Elrohir swallowed bile and pride both and spoke towards the floor. "It was not my intent to incite a quarrel—particularly not when I have longed for your homecoming. It is very dull here without you."

Elladan pulled fresh clothes from his chest, the wet thorn-thicket of his hair concealing his expression. "Is it?"

A small concession, those two words, but Elrohir took them as a sign of his brother's softening. Knowing he had tried Elladan's patience, he forced his lips into a semblance of a smile. "Hideously so. How fared your journey? Tell me all. I want to hear every sordid story, every ridiculous ballad, every bawdy jest. In Gildor's company, I'm sure there was no lack."

Elladan looked up through his hair then flung an arm around Elrohir's neck with a suddenness that robbed his breath. "Indeed, no, there was not! And I shall be most happy to oblige! But if you desire a full account, I suppose you will just have to join us after all."

Partly to restore peace between them, partly because he could not stand the thought of sitting at his secretary another hour alone with his thoughts, and partly because Elladan looked to squeeze the breath out of him if he did not, Elrohir agreed.

* * *

Blue and green lanterns strung amidst the branches leant the grove a festive, vernal air as if even the oaks and maples sought to delay the dark days just a little longer. But the wind carried more than a hint of autumn's bite, and the heat of the bonfire on his face and the wine in his veins was welcome indeed.

Though consciousness of his station and his dignity rendered an all-out carousal out of the question, Elrohir found he was enjoying himself, despite himself, satisfied with a corner and a cup of wine that, if not endlessly emptied, at least remained pleasantly half-full. For the first time in days, the muscles in his back and shoulders had let loose their tension.

Even Elladan's sidling off with a few comrades for a little gambling and tale-telling failed to move him overmuch.

He looked up from the glowing wood as Gildor Inglorion stood with a purposeful air, his fair hair gilded by lantern and lambent flame. A conspiratorial smile hitched up one corner of his lips as he lifted his mazer high. The talking and jests quieted. All eyes turned to him.

"A toast!" he called, his voice ringing out with practiced ease over the assembly. "To the hospitality of the Master of Imladris and his folk! Their grapes are as sweet as their maidens. Their land as glorious as Spring in Yavanna's gardens—"

Elrohir rolled his eyes. "And your tongue as cloying as birdlime! Cease your flattery, Gildor, and let us drink ere we perish of thirst!"

Amidst the laughter, Gildor cast a look of mock-sternness down his nose at him. "It is well, young lord, that you are the provider of such bounty, or I might be tempted to pour it over your head."

Elrohir acknowledged both threat and cheers with his own raised tin. Amidst Gildor's merry company, no gloom could last for long. The wandering Elves always provided a much-needed bout of levity and change when they visited Imladris, and those not on duty at the barracks, learning of their advent, had shirked other entertainments to meet them. Old comrades exchanged news; new acquaintances exchanged names and a little more; talk and wine-warmed laughter swirled through the air, sweeter than a final breath of spring.

"This is the most cheerful you have looked all night," Gildor remarked, taking a seat beside him. "When you came with Elladan, I thought he was dragging you to your execution, what with the dour look on your face."

"I have not been in the best spirits of late," Elrohir admitted.

Though he granted Elrohir an understanding smile, Gildor did not ask for details. A lifetime of leading a company of wandering Elves—most of them either Exiles or chance-met strangers who had left their homes, their families, their lives, for reasons of their own—had all but extinguished his interest in others' private affairs. For which Elrohir was grateful.

"Well, I am glad to see them lifted," Gildor said and changed the subject easily. "I would find it hard not to be when you are here in the autumn. There is a certain tinge of memory in the trees that is not present at other seasons. Though as early as autumn has come on, I think we look to a hard winter and a long. If your father will have us emptying the buttery, we may stay the season."

"You know perfectly well my father has asked you many times to remain permanently if you wish," Elrohir told him over the rim of his cup.

Gildor laughed, the light of the fire on his smooth, handsome face making him seem younger than his many years. "Ah, but as your father very well knows, my heart is not made for one home. I chose the wandering life long ago and am content in it. I cannot change now."

"Though I will say," he added after a thoughtful pause, "I am glad to know that Imladris is here. It is not often we find a place of safety and rest where our gear—or other things—can be mended."

"Your journey was not an easy one, I take it?" Elrohir had seen something like relief in the hard, lean faces of Gildor's men this night. Edginess lurked beneath their slightly too-loud laughter, a tension they vetted with wine and song and comradeship.

A shadow flitted across Gildor's face. "It seems with every passing year, the world grows a little darker, and the roads we once traveled unmolested are not as safe as once they were."

"I can scarce imagine anyone or anything causing you much concern, Gildor," Elrohir said. There were few indeed who would be so brash and so foolish as to challenge an elven company openly upon the road, and he said as much.

Gildor looked at him, and Elrohir was taken aback by the sudden gravity in his stare. "Nonetheless. You were missed."

Elrohir sensed mild recrimination in his elder's words. Elladan's desire for errantries abroad had only increased with the years, and each time they rode out whether in the company of others or together alone, Elrohir worried. All it would take was a twist of a horse's leg to throw its rider into a tree, an unseen arrow from a night-shrouded grove, or in the thick and clutch of battle, a poisoned blade nicking an arm…And he could not bear to think of their father, alone in the great house, having to hear the news that another of their shrinking family had been lost to orcs.

So he had stayed, braving Elladan's disappointment—and, truth be told, his own at whiles. He did not like the feeling that Gildor thought him a coward for his choice.

"I was needed here," Elrohir retorted a trifle defensively. "My father desired my presence, and I do not have the luxury as Elladan does to abandon my responsibilities and duties for a lark in the wild."

Far from taking offense at Elrohir's churlish reply, Gildor laughed his easy laugh. "The curse of the firstborn, I am afraid, Elrohir. I meant only that your brother was good company though it was not the same without you. We do so tire of staring at the same faces for seasons on end."

Abashed at his childish oversensitivity, he mumbled, "I doubt my own face would have alleviated that." But his words were half-lost under a shouted hail.

"Not I, my lord!" One of Gildor's men had overheard them and detached himself with a little difficultly from his seat upon a fallen log. "I could feast upon the sight of your noble features though a king's table were laid before me."

"Ausir, you flatterer." Gildor cuffed the shoulder of a Noldorin elf who crouched easily beside them. He was lithe and sinewy with a narrow, hawklike face. "Elrohir, this is Ausir. He's been traveling with me for years uncounted now. And a more feckless, miserable rascal you could never hope to meet."

"Always free with your compliments, my lord," the 'rascal' said, unrepentantly filching the wineskin from his lord's hand and refilling his mazer.

"With such company, I'm sure Elladan felt right at home," Elrohir said and held out his own.

Ausir obliged. "It is an honor to meet you, my lord. Your brother has told us tales."

"Has he indeed? Not too maligning, I hope," Elrohir japed in an effort to forget his earlier distemper.

"Not too," Ausir agreed with a wink. "I had heard of the legendary skill of Elrond's sons with a blade, but I had yet to see it with my own eyes until we had the honor of your brother in our company."

Elrohir frowned. "I hope his blade-skill was not too much needed upon your road."

"Blade-skill is always needed when dealing with orcs," Ausir said, taking a swig from the skin.

Elrohir struggled to shake the fog of wine from his limbs as he sat up abruptly. "Orcs?"

Ausir's dark eyes flicked from Elrohir to his lord questioningly and back again.

"We were upon the Great-Road, near the bridge of Tharbad a fortnight past," Gildor explained, snatching the wineskin out of Ausir's hands. "It is treacherous there since the loss of the king. The marshes have grown wild, and the river-crossing perilous with all the snow we had last winter. The undergrowth was thick upon the other side. We did not see them until it was too late. Ausir's horse was killed out from under him, and if not for your brother's quick thinking and a good deal of luck, we might have lost him, too."

"I am glad to see you safe and sorry for your loss," Elrohir said. The words sounded mechanic even though he meant them for he was fond himself of his own mount. For wanderers like the Exiles of Gildor's company, a companion was as close as many would get to home.

Ausir nodded but did not raise his eyes.

"I have never known orcs to stray so close to Dunland territory before," Gildor said, fiddling absently with the wineskin's strap. "The herdsmen, in particular, have set traps for Sauron's servants before to keep their flocks and homesteads from being raided."

"Orcs are arrogant. They will dare anywhere if it means they stand to gain something or cause misery to others," Elrohir said blackly, staring into the fire until the smoke and heat beat at his eyes.

"We need not talk of this now—" Gildor began.

"How many were they? Did you take any captive? Question their purpose?" Elrohir rattled off the usual litany.

"Large for a roving band. About a score, maybe. They must have had some other errand for they did not press their advantage and headed north. Such as we were, we could not pursue, and we are not in the habit of taking prisoners anyway. It would have been foolish to try." Gildor sounded as if he had had this argument before, and Elrohir did not doubt Elladan had pressed insistently for the pursuit.

"I'd say we were lucky enough not to be taken captive ourselves," Ausir said, staring into his cup. "Who knows what they would have done to us."

Elrohir went very still. Even after all these years, it still hurt to hear.

Gildor looked hard and meaningfully at Ausir. The elf's lips went white and slack as he realized the thoughtlessness of his last remark.

"I-I beg your most sincere pardon, my lord. I meant—"

Elrohir shook his head. There was nothing to be said for it. He had grown to hate that constricting look, that look where they saw, instead of him, a woman covered in blood and nightmare.

As the silence stretched to an unbearable length, he drank off his cup in one long, hard swallow and got to his feet as quickly as the vintage's heavy hand allowed.

"It is late, and I have lingered overlong. Where has my miserable brother slipped off to? I would not leave him bereft of my company without first informing him of the fact." He meant to sound light and teasing, but neither Ausir nor Gildor so much as attempted a smile.

"He and a few lads retired to the lodge, I think," Ausir offered as if to make up for his gaffe.

Avoiding Gildor's concerned glance, Elrohir thanked him and went in search of Elladan.

* * *

Once beyond the fire's reach, the wind wrapped its chill arms about him, but fortified by the wine's vigorous embrace, he leaned into it as he sought the unlit path between the bonfire and the lodge.

When he and Elladan had been youthful enough to consider the lodge a venerable distance from home, it had been a secret place and a special point of pride to which only they and those they favored were permitted access. The better part of four seasons' labor had seen an edifice that blended the naturalness and durability of Silvan architecture with the elegance and comfort of Noldorin design.

But deeper than its fashioning, in the air of the rooms, in the grain of the rafters, in the scent of applewood smoke from the chimney, lay the memories of lazy days and gentle nights, shared confidences and kept secrets.

Elrohir had not entered it in years, and even the trees seemed to think little of his return for they snagged at his heels with their roots, and the earth bowed its back underfoot, so that he all but fell against the door when he finally reached it. Had his legs felt less like stirred honey, he might have left Elladan to his wassail in favor of bed.

Heaving open the door released a gush of firelit air, the smell of men close-quartered, and a shout of raucous laughter that struck him full in the face. Dazed, he halted on the threshold.

"Elrohir! At last!" Elladan waved him in over the laughter. "Shut the cursed door, will you?"

Elrohir did as he was bidden, more because he had been bidden rather than out of a desire to do so. As his eyes adjusted to the smoky interior, he realized Elladan was entertaining some of the junior members of their command as well as his friends. These had arranged themselves, after the fashion of youth, in protective little clusters around the wine barrel and in corners of the room. Judging by the looseness of their limbs and the hectic flush in their cheeks, they had outdone their comrades at the bonfire in celebrating Elladan's homecoming. A few managed to rouse themselves long enough to salute him.

The senior officers were enjoying the privileges of their ranks by commandeering the table in front of the fireplace with the closest access to the wine. Among them were his brother and Aragorn, naturally, the young Lieutenant Lalaith, one he did not recognize but, by the fashioning of his dress and the leaves artfully woven in his hair, guessed to be one of Gildor's.

And, of course, Lórien's captain.

The years had wrought little change in him. He had the chiseled features and musculature of a man who had spent his life under the strict conditioning of a barracks. But there the resemblance to a soldier's soldier ended. The whole, lean length of him sprawled against the chair at the head of the table in a decidedly un-soldierly manner. His collar gaped open, and his hair hung unrestrained to his shoulder blades. Though he espoused the virtues of military discipline and dress for those under his command, in practice, the captain had all the military bearing of a cat and had long assumed some of the more slovenly habits of officers whose distant border-posts allowed them to keep out from under the eyes of their superiors.

That he was Silvan—and a captain of infantry—might have excused his lack of refinement in the eyes of others. But Elrohir knew too well that the Galadhrim rivaled their Noldor brethren for elegant panoply when they so chose. Haldir knew perfectly well what was expected of him. He simply chose not to comply.

Amusement lit the grey eyes as they alighted on Elrohir, who straightened his shoulders and spine. He, at least, would comport himself as the officer he was.

Haldir acknowledged him with a slow nod and an upraised glass, calling over the heads of his comrades in an overly hearty tone. "Our brave marshal! I was beginning to think you would not come at all, Elrohir."

Elrohir summoned his aplomb and nodded at the faces he knew, reserving his smile for Elladan, who pulled him into a chair between him and Estel. "I regret I have been otherwise occupied."

"I am glad you came." Elladan whispered loud enough for the room to hear. "You do keep too much to yourself."

"And you have had more wine than is good for you."

Elladan grinned lopsidedly at him and tossed a languid arm around his shoulders. "I have been excellently feted by my brothers. You should have come earlier. Haldir has just been regaling us with one of his _richer_ experiences in Pelargir where, so he says, he met a lady of particularly colorful reputation whose acrobatics on the quaysides rivaled the tumblers of Gondolin and whose acrobatics _off_ the quayside were—"

"A tale worth hearing, no doubt. A pity I missed it." If Elladan marked the utter lack of regret in his voice, he said nothing of it.

Haldir flicked his fingers as if to dismiss the issue and pushed himself away from the table. "Little matter. Now that our merry company is complete, it's time for something finer than this swill your brother insists on downing."

"I don't believe a word of it." Lalaith fired an accusative, albeit blurry, glare across the room at Haldir, who was rooting through a cabinet. "No woman—even a Harad wanton—can do that with her—"

"Do _not_ say it again!" Elladan stuffed his fingers in his ears with a delighted grimace.

Elrohir glanced sidelong at Aragorn and raised an eyebrow. The man shrugged.

_"_This is the first I have heard of it," Aragorn said, expelling a stream of pipe smoke in his comrade's direction.

"I never lie. And she was no wanton." Haldir returned to the table with a dusky carafe and seven glasses. "A soldier is a soldier. A mariner is a mariner. A liar is a liar. But a wanton is always a lady no matter the work she does. Their lives are hard enough."

With an air of ritual, he gathered up his fellows' used mugs and exchanged them for a glass of finely wrought crystal—the same kind of fine crystal that on other nights adorned his father's drawing room cabinet.

Among Noldor and Silvan soldiers alike, it was a point of honor for one of their number to keep account of the men to make certain they drank enough to be sporting but not so much as to mar an evening of entertainment and fine spirits. In Imladris, usually that honor fell to the highest-ranking officer present. Haldir had partaken in enough Imladris celebrations to know this. Instead he took that honor upon himself. No one protested, so Elrohir forced himself to smile graciously, watching to make sure the captain filled his glass last as was proper.

Haldir held his glass aloft, prompting them to do likewise. "To our comrade Elladan, who is, as ever, generous with his father's goods. And to sweet Beruthia who is far prettier. May her bed be ever warm."

As Haldir refilled their glasses, Elrohir murmured in his brother's ear, "I suppose Father offered up his good brandies and crystal freely for this little endeavor?"

Elladan winced guiltily.

Haldir overheard him. "Are you your father's scullery maid or his heir? Set your mind at ease, Elrohir, we shall see them safely returned by morning."

"If emptier," said Gildor's man with a grin. "What else shall we drink to?"

"To the fairest lady ever to grace the paths of Imladris, Thúrin," Lalaith said at once, thrusting his glass so vigorously in the air, he nearly spilled it. "Tathariel, Gelmir's daughter."

"You make the same toast every time. One would think if you so desired the lady, you would have abandoned our company for hers by now," Thúrin grumbled, but he raised his glass in salute nonetheless.

"You don't understand," Lalaith moaned as one in mortal torment. "She is a—a true lady. I couldn't go to her just…"

"It has nothing to do with the fact that her father is also one of Elrond's retainers and would have your jewels for even thinking of laying hands on her, would it?" Thúrin returned slyly.

"I fear she is forever beyond my reach."

"Haldir, no more for this one! He shall depress us all with his love-longing," Elladan said, reaching over and slapping the lieutenant's empty glass facedown on the table. "His father will skin me as is for exposing his tender ears to all our bawdy talk, all the more if we return him in a less-than-presentable state."

With the typical fervor of a newly appointed officer, Lalaith protested vehemently that he was well of age to indulge in their sport and their tales, and his father had no say in it whatsoever.

"Oh, there are many remedies for such ailments as love. The easiest is to look only as far as the end of your arm," Haldir said, lifting his own glass to his lips.

This earned choking snorts from both Elladan and Thúrin and a bemused squint at his right hand from Lalaith.

"Or, barring that…" The harsher burr of the captain's 'r's' were beginning to tell through his Sindarin. "…take a horse to the nearest town of Men, look for a red door or a crimson lantern in the window, inquire within whether there are any—what did you say the lady looked like again?"

"She is beautiful beyond compare. Her eyes are like emeralds…her hair as dark and sweet as honey…She is unlike anyone I have ever known."

"They all are. It should be easy enough then to find a lady of that quality. And—" He made an expansive gesture to encompass what would follow.

Lalaith slowly turned a mottled purple as he realized what was being implied. "Tathariel is fairer than any mortal slattern, and not one of your whores. How dare you impugn—?"

Haldir laughed.

Elrohir had heard enough. The poor lad was too wine-addled and too young to know that Haldir was purposefully trying to get a rise out of him. "I cannot see what poor sport you find in baiting the boy, Captain. Particularly when not all of us are as…_well-traveled_ as you."

Beside him Elladan stiffened. Elrohir paid him no heed.

But it was not the jibe that had caught Haldir's attention. "It is 'Captain,' still then?"

"I believe it was you who sought distance between us," Elrohir replied.

"Drink your drink, Elrohir. You look parched." Haldir jerked his chin at the glass in Elrohir's hand. "Or are you some timorous flower that you fear anything stronger than water?"

Under any other circumstances, Elrohir would not have risen to such obvious provocation for he had learned long ago that the captain would not engage those who did not fight back. But the brandy was already beating at the inside of his veins, and he was the marshal of Imladris, a leader among Men and Elves, the eldest son of Elrond Peredhil, and no child to be cowed by a cutting remark from the man who had taught him some little of swordplay, long ago.

He smiled with all the contempt he could muster behind his teeth. "I shall at my own choosing."

Far from silencing the captain, Elrohir's little act of defiance only spurred his barbed tongue. "Since brambles and weeds along the roadside are so little to your liking, might I inquire what fair flower _has_ turned your head this season? Or do you remain in the cloister of your study amidst your tomes and your quills, seeking nothing warmer than another candle to better your light?"

Two younger subalterns, who had been staring at their table curiously, feigned interest in the far side of the room when one of them caught Elrohir's eye. Lalaith fidgeted with his downturned glass. Elladan and Aragorn sat, silent and watchful. There was too much jeering behind the jest, too much intent to draw blood rather than score a mere scratch. And draw blood it had. For Haldir had, as he usually did, struck upon the truth.

Elrohir had not sought a lover in more years than he would safely admit aloud. He had had his share of fumbles and dalliances when a young soldier, as they all had, but there was little to be gained in a night's romp even had he been the kind to seek such shallow comfort. And more than that had proven a more complicated task than he preferred. Imladris' women were, with the exception of a few like Tathariel, not inclined to the soldier's life. They did not understand the inherent difficulty in repurposing one's battle-hardened heart for sentiment and sword-roughened hands for soft touches. They did not understand the possibility—nay, the probability—of death in battle when one pursued the Enemy as relentlessly and ruthlessly as he had. They did not understand why attempts at prying up his thoughts and feelings of an intimate or forthcoming nature were met with playful deflection, gentle rebuttal, or outright disregard.

They did not understand that should the shadow that stooped low over him in the wake of his mother's departure finally claim him, he would rather leave no one behind to grieve. He would not wish that fate on anyone. Especially not on someone he loved or who loved him.

Of course, the only one he had divulged this to was Elladan, and Elrohir glanced at him, fearful that wine and fellowship might have sufficiently loosened his brother's tongue to the point of divulging confidences. To his relief, Elladan stared fixedly down into his glass and did not look up.

"My duties come first," Elrohir replied, hoping a small concession would allow him to keep a shred of his dignity intact. He brought his glass to his lips and drank it off. The liquor and the bitter truth that accompanied it scalded him all the way to his stomach. "And even were that not so, I would rather not make spectacle of my privacy, Captain, if it is all the same to you."

Haldir held his gaze until Elladan broke in, fighting to dispel the tension.

"Thúrin has a tale to top yours, Haldir. He and Ausir were at a dockside tavern in Umbar, of all places and—"

"Perhaps, there is nothing to make spectacle of. Or...it has been some time since we last spoke of such. Perhaps, your _convictions_ have altered in the intervening years, and I should not ask 'what delicate flower' so much as 'what woody stem' has caught your eye?"

There was a sharp silence, broken only by Thúrin choking on his drink. Elladan's smile stiffened, and Aragorn cast the captain a disapproving look. Lalaith gaped openly.

Treacherous warmth suffused Elrohir's face and neck. The insulting tone would have been enough to stir his hackles even had the question itself not been doubly offensive. The Noldor of Imladris valued family and the marriage bond above all other selfish pleasures though the Silvan and Sindar practiced other arrangements without courting ostracism. Elrohir had learned something of those other arrangements during his time in Lórien and among the many different clans who called Imladris their home, but they had not called to him. He still looked distantly to a day of peace when, if the Valar were forgiving, he would live to be a husband to a wife, a father to a fair-haired child.

Yet there were those among his own men who already believed him unduly influenced by Silvan "leniencies" and even the implication, however unintentional or gently meant, that he was not as much a Noldor in his traditions and inclinations as they could do great harm. Rumor rent apart the deserving and undeserving impartially. And Haldir's question before the ears of Elrohir's own soldiers, friends and kin had been neither unintentional nor gently meant.

The forbearance required to prevent redressing his honor with blood brought his voice out low and snarling. "They have not altered."

"No, you are not such a one," Haldir agreed, smoothing a hand over his jaw. "No, you are more the kind to immerse himself in tomes and trade agreements, logs and muster rolls. You've spent so long with your fingers dipped in ink, you've forgotten the touch of life's sweetest nectar. I'm not talking of flowers anymore. Do you still remember how to make a woman sigh, Elrohir? Or has that gone with your—?"

"I am _able_," Elrohir snapped, the heat of his blood dropping into his hands as he matched the captain stare for stare. "I do not see how any of this matters in the least."

"It doesn't. Not to me." Haldir leaned back in his chair, releasing Elrohir and glancing round at the company. "It is curious though. How long has it been then? A year? A yén?"

"Not all of us are in thrall to our base desires," Elrohir said.

Haldir's lip curled on a hard leer.

Aragorn clapped his hands together with a commanding crack.

"That's enough of such talk," he said. "I'm surprised at you two. We are all friends here. Elrohir, sit down. Haldir, stop being a miser and pass the bottle round again before we all perish of thirst. I would hear if the more disreputable parts of Umbar have changed since last I walked there."

Elrohir had not realized he had begun to rise until Aragorn told him so. Slowly, he lowered himself back into his chair, the blood still humming in his ears and fingertips. As if a collective breath had been released, the room relaxed, the brandy went round again, and Thúrin took up the conversational slack with a will.

Aragorn's reprimand had put Haldir in a sulk. He stared listlessly into his drink, half-attending to Thúrin's tale as if he had heard it a hundred times before. Shortly thereafter, he took himself off to a corner somewhere, and Elrohir gladly watched him go. Eager to replace the flush of humiliation with anything else, he let his glass be filled more than he should have and was soon half-attending to his comrades' tales himself.

Inevitably the night turned to wagering on a game of dice, and Elrohir, who had little taste for losing his coin, roused himself enough to stretch his legs and seek out the sideroom under the loft stairs. Water on his hot face and neck revived him a little, the dim quiet welcome after the noise and heat of the company. The hour was late, later than he had meant to remain, but he could not stay the night despite Elladan's assurances that he was welcome. He had duties to take up on the morrow. However, the thought of the walk back to the house along the uneven, unlighted footpaths as well as the trade agreement that still awaited recopying when he arrived did not inspire an immediate eagerness to depart.

The boards above his head grunting under a man's weight interrupted his vacillating, the steps familiar as his brother's. Less familiar were the scratch of a flint match and the fragrance of pipe smoke.

"Why do you remain here in the dark?"

Aragorn's voice was so close, the question so direct, Elrohir lifted his head to peer through the gap in the stairs. But his foster brother was not looking at him but rather at a figure draped lengthwise across the head of the stair like a vigilant wolfhound or an overindulged carouser.

The dwindling match-flame illuminated the side of a glass, the long fingers that held it, and a skein of pale hair. "Toasting the advent of my winnings. I wagered silver on Thúrin's formidable skill. It has never failed me yet."

"You wound me," Aragorn said, sounding anything but as he leaned against the railing. "Not so long ago I bested _you_."

"Thúrin doesn't know you well enough to let you win."

"Ah, so that was the way of it. And here, I assumed you were cheating. Where did you pull silver from anyway?"

Haldir muttered something that made Aragorn laugh. It had been a long time since Elrohir had heard Aragorn's laughter. It was bright still as it had been in his youth, but years and some unknowable tension had added a brittle quality to it as if someone had wound it up tight inside him and would not let it out save in gasps and starts.

He sobered suddenly. What little Elrohir could make out of his face now that the match had died seemed weathered, tired. "I wish to speak with you."

An outcry for more wine and more wagers from the fireside drowned out the rest of the exchange, but even had it not Elrohir would not have lingered. Aragorn's words suggested a private conversation. Besides, it would take but a casual glance downward for either one of them to mark him where he stood, thievishly listening. He had begun to edge out from under the stairs, intent on rejoining the company and making excuses for his departure, when the sound of his name brought him up short.

"—with Elrohir?" Aragorn was saying. "You are not so deep in your cups you will quarrel like that with a man for no reason."

"How little you know me." A much put-upon sigh. "Elrohir knows I tease rough."

"Yes, well, you very nearly displaced the mirth with your 'teasing.' I would not have this night end with hard words still between comrades."

"Ah. So that is why you sought me. You would have me play the penitent to assuage Elrohir's pride."

"That is one reason I sought you, yes."

There was silence for a little. Elrohir did not dare raise his eyes but neither did he leave. If he slipped out now, they would surely see him. Haldir started to speak. Elrohir could no longer see his face, but he did not need to. He could hear well enough with his breath halted in his chest, straining,

"If men's nerves are unstrung by a few harmless words, what good will they be when the Shadow surrounds them? It came behind us in the Harad, but it traveled the homeward roads far faster than we. Summer may linger in Elrond's gardens, but it is hard and dark and cold just beyond, the songs of steel and arrow the only merry ones. Where are Imladris' knights? The fell-eyed archers of Ost-in-Edhil? The hardy survivors of Doriath and Nargothrond, Sirion and Gondolin? They were here once. But now they are gone: fallen, faded, fled, or they have traded their swords for councilors' seats, concerning themselves with provincial matters rather than the battlefield. And these striplings are all that remain to defend her. I haven't seen eyes so full of stars since the Dagorlad. The Bruinen will bleed before they realize what fools they've been to remain."

_It has been many a long year since orcs dared stray so close to Imladris' borders. _A chill groped down Elrohir's spine from nape to tail, and his hands went cold even though his neck and face burned with the captain's unwelcome, but not untrue, words.

Aragorn let out a scoffing breath that sounded more like a pained sigh.

"The brandy makes you melancholy. It is past time you left off." Glass clinked decisively on wood. "Find Elrohir, apologize, then join us, and be merry. Or, if words of penitence stick in your throat, go and sleep. Morning light clears many a nightly air. But do not do _this_, I beg you."

"Oh, do not you _chide_," the captain snapped back. "By the stars! My own mother gave less heed to my affairs than you. If I am to be penitent or merry, I need another drink. _Melancholy_. How should a Man make such judgments anyway except against his own sadly lacking measure?"

"A Man who knows that spirits are poor succor for thirst among other things." Aragorn sounded like a mariner who had smashed against a pinnacle of unseen rock and was trying to decide whether to place his life in the hands of the storm-tossed waters or the splintering ship. "A Man who, you yourself have acknowledged, knows a little of the healing arts and still counts himself your friend."

"When _my friend_ deprives me of other means, I must needs seek elsewhere for my succor."

"I acted out of your best interests, and well you know it. You would have—"

"You know, Estel, I have found yet another name for you." The stairs creaked again under a shifting weight. "What think you of _Freca_?"

The steps descending were not Aragorn's this time, but Elrohir scarcely heard them.

The echo of the insult washed over him like a sea wave, stunning in its breath and intensity. Freca, the name of an upstart who had laid claim to a throne that never belonged to him. The name of a bastard. The name of a traitor. For a split fraction of a second, Elrohir saw Arathorn as clearly as he'd ever seen him in life. A star-shaped hole was through his left eye. And it was as if Haldir had spat in his face.

Before Elrohir realized he was moving, he stepped from his concealment. At his approach, Haldir glanced over his shoulder, once, sharply, then resumed his progress to the sideboard where the flasks and wine barrel stood.

"You may hurl all the insults you like at me," Elrohir said to the captain's broad back, "but I will not suffer my kinsman to be spoken to like that."

Haldir filched an unwatched glass from a nearby table, sniffed its contents, and drained what remained. He sifted among the decanters, selected a bottle of pale liquor. "What is that old adage of eavesdroppers and the things they overhear?"

"I was _not_—" Elrohir started to say, but a few pairs of eyes and more than a few ears had turned in their direction. He took a breath and hastily lowered his voice. "I will not feign to understand what has passed between you two, but forty years of Aragorn's tolerant good will has clearly given you the mistaken impression that endless allowances will be made for your behavior. Your conduct all night has been offensive. You should heed him and take yourself off."

The words clanged between them like a gauntlet thrown as Lalaith staggered to the wine barrel. Judging by the way he spilled half of his flagon's contents in his haste to scurry back to his comrades, he had not missed the tension in the air.

Haldir's eyes followed him back to the table. "Elladan should know better. Thúrin has no compunction against emptying the purses of the foolish."

"Did you hear me?" Elrohir said. He was standing so straight he was nearly at attention. His heart beat quick and hard against his ribs. "I am the marshal of these barracks, _Captain_, as you seem to have forgotten. You are a fool to ignore Aragorn, but should you ignore me, you will find I am no mere stripling."

A few heads at the senior officer's table turned and more than a few of the younger members of the guard at the sound of laughter. The churl was actually _laughing_ at him! As if Elrohir were little more than a pup worrying a wolf's leg with its milk teeth. The worst part was Elrohir felt indeed like slinking away into the shadows with his tail between his legs, but that satisfaction was not one he was willing to grant his mocker. Instead, he eyed him stonily until Haldir managed to master himself.

The captain wiped his streaming eyes with a sleeve and coughed out a shallow bark of breath. The laughter fell from his face like a cracked mask as he glanced over Elrohir's shoulder. "You see, we are being merry."

Elrohir moved with him as he side-stepped. "I do not jest."

The captain's eyes finally met his, blinking as if only now aware of him, then sharpening. He closed the distance between them to less than a pace as if trying to force Elrohir back with his mere presence. And truthfully, Elrohir had to fight the instinctive urge to retreat from such uncomfortable proximity. Pipe smoke, woodsmoke, and brandy-sweat assaulted his nostrils and made his eyes prickle, but he did not drop his gaze. He was suddenly very aware that Haldir was taller than he by a good half handspan.

"Oh, Elrohir, don't be ridiculous." Haldir tilted his chin back a little, accenting the broader length of his shoulders. "What will you do? Remove me forcibly? Have me lashed? Jack or cat or _hithlain_ scourge? Or, perhaps, you'll convene another court martial to soothe poor _Estel's_ injured feelings? Do tell me."

Without lifting his eyes from Elrohir's face, he raised the borrowed glass to his lips. Firelight glinted red at his temples where a light sheen had gathered, and the tendon under his jaw drew taut as a bowstring as he swallowed. Something with teeth unfurled in Elrohir's belly as Haldir glanced over his shoulder again, brushed past him, his undertone full of reproach.

"Do not make threats you cannot carry out, _Lord _Elrohir. It makes you look weak."

A hand that seemed to belong to someone else closed on the captain's grey sleeve. Fingers curled. Clamped down. For the space of a breath, Elrohir felt the texture of rough weave beneath his palm, the long seam running up the side of the sleeve, the pliant hardness of muscle, sinew, bone beneath.

And then it was gone.

A sharp _shock_ rattled Elrohir's cheekbone. Instinctively, he threw his hands up to ward his face against another blow and reeled backward. His footing went out from under him, and he sprawled against the oak cask, winded, head ringing, the wine barrel's spigot between his shoulders and the taste of iron on his tongue from where he'd bitten his cheek.

For a moment, he sat there amid the sudden silence and the glittering shards of a glass he had not even heard break, stunned more than hurt, though the hurt would come. Once, as a child, he had committed some offense he no longer remembered, and the captain had corrected him similarly with the back of his hand. But he did remember afterward, his mother asking about the bruise on his chin. He had lied, told her he had fallen or some such all-too-common accident. But the effort to tell her while she held him with her eyes had forced the sting of shame and fear into his own, a tightness into his throat. Now, under the eyes of the entire room, his throat tightened, his eyes betrayed him with that childish sting and the smoldering coals of humiliation and injured honor in his breast flared into roaring flame.

He lunged to his feet only to find his progress checked by Elladan's hand planted on his chest, and Lalaith speaking urgently and nonsensically in his ear. Only when the lieutenant's hands joined his brother's and a blaze of hot, white pain pulsed across his nose and mouth did he allow himself to be steered into a chair. He blinked the haze of tears and rage from his vision and ran his fingertips over his cheeks, jaw, chin, lips. When he reached his nose, his eyes started to water again fiercely. He cursed.

Elladan's hands brushed his aside and probed a little less than carefully. "I do not think it is broken," he said. "Lean forward and—"

"I learned under our father too." He batted his brother's away and pinched just below the bridge of his nose.

Elladan looked down at him. "What in the name of stars _happened_?"

_I did as you asked, I tried_, he wanted to say, but his mouth was too full of blood to answer. He searched over Elladan's shoulder for his antagonist. Haldir stood stiff and ramrod straight with his back against the sideboard as if he had been the one struck, his hands curled into fists at his sides. As if sensing Elrohir's gaze, he lifted his head. His eyes tracked slowly over Elrohir's face, but his expression betrayed nothing. He looked away when Aragorn approached.

Aragorn's assessing eyes swept over Elrohir and rested for a long time on Haldir, who seemed just as determined not to look at him. Silence swelled in the room like a ghostly presence, heavy and terrible.

Haldir's eyes flashed up to Aragorn's face, quick and mutinous. "You should have let me be."

Elrohir stood though the movement caused the floor to dip angrily beneath him. "You _dare_ blame him for this? It is you who—"

"Enough." Aragorn closed his eyes briefly, looking so tired Elrohir let Elladan force him back into his chair. "We will speak of this later."

Haldir pushed himself away from the sideboard and picked his way through the tangle of chairs and scattered night's merriment. The door shut with a clap behind him.

Aragorn swore under his breath but bid Elladan, who had moved towards the door, to let him go. Then he turned to their guests with a wan smile. "For my part, I had hoped our merriment would end happily, but it is late, lads. It is past time to call the night to an end."

Some of the young soldiers had not waited for Aragorn's word before slipping gleefully out to spread the news to their comrades. Those few who had remained abandoned their drinks and dice at once. Lalaith and Thúrin needed to be urged, but Elrohir could not bring himself to return their concerned questions and glances.

Once the door had closed upon their backs, he allowed himself to slump fully into the chair. It had been a long time since he had felt so tired. "I cannot fathom how you endured such for so long," he said to Aragorn.

"Some days were easier than others." Aragorn slid a hand into his ragged hair and slowly squeezed his fingers into a tight knot at the nape of his neck, an unconscious gesture of distress Elrohir had not seen since the man turned twenty. "What was your quarrel with him?"

Elrohir shrugged. Speaking pained him, but Aragorn only waited. "I…had marked that the captain had partaken in a little more of the festivities than was good for him. I had no wish for a scene before my men." Had he not been so stung by humiliation and pain, he would have laughed at the irony of those words now. "However, when I suggested he ought to take himself off, he… _disagreed_."

That he had overheard their exchange seemed irrelevant. That he had laid hand on the captain first seemed a fair omission, considering he was the one who would have to conceal himself in his bedchambers until the bruises faded.

"He is tired." Elladan righted a fallen stool and sank onto it as if he were every bit as drained as Elrohir felt. "It is just a touch of temper. It will pass."

"He is drunk," Elrohir retorted. His cheek had started to throb. "And such conduct is not a _touch_ of anything. I would be well within my rights to seek the lashes he so seems to desire of me."

"You are not truly going to seek lashes on him for this, are you?" Elladan protested. "He's not himself, Elrohir."

"That does _not_ excuse him!" Elrohir said. "A cur that bites the hand that feeds it is given a blow, not a bone to gnaw."

"He is our friend. Not some mongrel to be scolded with a beating—"

"Peace, both of you," Aragorn said. "Elrohir, you can hardly remain in such a state. Elladan, would you go fill a pitcher?"

Elladan did so then murmured his excuses and slipped out. The flare of resentful hurt that flashed through Elrohir momentarily dulled the pain in his face. It seemed Haldir would have to kill him before his brother deigned to care or even agree that the captain was in the wrong. If even then. Aragorn, however, was also silent as he handed Elrohir a dampened cloth. Damningly so.

"How Elladan believes _he_ is the one aggrieved." Elrohir said, mopping gingerly at the drying blood on his chin and lips. "What does he expect me to have done? Yield?"

"Perhaps," Aragorn said with such frustrating reasonableness Elrohir could have hit him. "Sometimes there is nothing else you can do, and pressing your will does more harm than good."

Easy enough for Aragorn to rebuke him when it was not _his_ honor and reputation the captain had compromised. Of course, he was right, but it was hard to reconcile with Elrohir's much-abused pride, which demanded satisfaction in vengeance rather than gentle assuagement. It was not the first time Aragorn had hinted that his pride needed tempering, and though he recognized this fault in himself, he had yet to find a constructive way of dealing with it.

"Let me see." Aragorn took the cloth from him, blotted about his lip a little more then palpated gentler than Elladan had about his cheekbone and nose. "Does that hurt?"

"A little."

Aragorn's fingers searched further, stilling when Elrohir winced. "Well, my friend, you will have a glorious bruise and a respectable lump on the back of your head, but nothing is broken."

"I shall have to thank him for that small mercy then," Elrohir grumbled.

"I will fetch some arnica. That should help the bruising. I think I have a little left." He went up the loft stairs and returned a few moments later with his satchel, upending its rudimentary contents across the table.

Jumbled amidst the willow bark and _athelas, _gut and hooked needles of a healer's trade was a vial the size of his littlest finger, such as an apothecary might use for his most potent medicines. Or poisons.

Elrohir took it up and turned it over in his fingers, the glass flashing with a thousand varicolored facets, glowing even in the dim light of the fire. It bore the stamp of Erebor on its underside. Of its contents there was no sign save for a terribly familiar, bittersweet scent about the mouth.

"What was in this?"

Aragorn was watching him, the little pot of arnica in hand, forgotten. A peculiar expression crossed his face as he took the vial from Elrohir's fingers, his brow furrowing.

"Something I picked up along the road," he said at last with deliberate carelessness, yet he tossed the vial aside as if loathing its very touch.

"That is Dwarvish crystal. Not something you expect to find lying along the roadside," Elrohir said. "Come now. What was it, and where did you come by it?"

A grey room. His father measuring out the dose carefully. A red-brown liquid that resembled nothing so much as blood… It made _her_ bleary eyes seek the door, searching always for something or someone he could not see. Under its influence she would sometimes call him by his brother's name…or another name when she verged on sleep.

"_Oloss_. It was _oloss_ wasn't it?"

"Yes," Aragorn admitted, so quietly he could scarcely be heard over the hearth's crackling.

"What need had you for that?"

"It still has its uses here and there," Aragorn said, picking through the remnants of his supplies as if searching for something. "For certain…wounds."

"Perhaps. Amongst the Silvan of Mirkwood who still believe a tincture of brandy and wormwood cures all ailments. You know better than that. _Oloss_ may have had its uses in the war for the grief-stricken or the grievously wounded. But that was before we learned of its source, the taint of the Shadow—"

"_I know_, Elrohir," Aragorn said, his eyes flashing quick and fierce. "I know. The Shadow of Dol Guldur has cost us dear. I assure you my own interest was… purely academic."

"Indeed." But Elrohir had long been able to read Aragorn's face despite the years that had changed it. "You acquired an _empty_ vial for academic purposes?"

Aragorn's lips twisted in a grimace. He still didn't look up from the table grain. "It must have spilled. The wax does not always hold well. Especially in the warmth of the South. I should have been keeping a closer eye out."

"No. See here? There are gouges," Elrohir said, indicating the pale marks along the lip. "It was pried open with a knife, I should say. And recently."

Aragorn just shook his head, kept shaking it until Elrohir spoke his name, the name of his childhood. Slowly, the Man raised his eyes, giving nothing away. "I cannot explain, Elrohir."

"You trusted me once with your confidences."

"I trust you still with _my_ confidences. But that of others…I cannot break. Even if I wish to."

Elrohir winced when Aragorn, his air decidedly preoccupied, spread the salve along his nose and cheek. Elrohir knew he would not be moved any more than Elrohir would have been in his position. "Very well. Keep your secrets. I care not."

Aragorn gentled his pressure but did not speak again. Elrohir, too wearied to press for unwanted conversation, let the silence wash over them. Not until they had tidied up the supplies, and Aragorn bent to toss another log on the fire did he break it.

"I owe you an apology, Elrohir,. Mayhap, if I had let well enough alone, things might not have ended as they did."

"Our quarrel is an old one, Aragorn. It had nothing to do with you. And it is not your responsibility to mend."

Aragorn did not seem to hear him. "Almost two-score years, Haldir and I have been friends. He is as much my brother as you and Elladan. The days are growing darker, and we will have need of all our brothers behind us before too long." He looked at Elrohir, and something in his gaze seemed to hint at a shared secret between them.

It was not so easy. "Aragorn, you have the envious perspective of the clear-minded."

Aragorn sighed and drew himself away from the fire, helping Elrohir to his feet. "It is late. I am for bed. You will stay here, yes?"

Elrohir did not have the wherewithal to object and allowed his foster brother to make up a pallet for him in the corner. But his pain and the hardness of the floor against his back precluded sleep. For what felt like hours after Elladan had slunk in and Aragorn had succumbed in his chair, Elrohir lay wakeful, alternating between shifting restlessly and staring up at the dark beams overhead.

The sparse threads of moonlight were the same as they had been in his childhood: gossamer, delicate, constantly broken and remade by the play of branches on floor and ceiling. The fire, banked and neglected, dwindled to a bed of glowing ashes, casting a thin light across the detritus of the night's celebration. However, the shadows in the corners seemed harder somehow, darker than those of his childhood, and the figure asleep in the chair was dark of hair and light of eyes, young and tired. The smell of pipesmoke, though not unpleasant, overwhelmed the resin that lingered in the walls and floors.

A fragment of wood fell onto the hearth and glowed there, a red eye that winked and died as the lodge door whispered open. A draft crept furtively into the room and brushed Elrohir's face with its fingers. A net of table legs and chairs interrupted his line of sight to the door but even had they not, Elrohir could guess well enough who would steal in at this hour.

Buckskin boots, favored by the Galadhrim for their noiselessness amongst the trees, sounded hollow on the floorboards as if bearing up under some heavy weight. Cautious but without carefulness, a tall, dark shape passed Elrohir's nest of blankets and halted beside the dying fire. A fresh log crunched in the grate, and the iron poker stirred the sparks slowly back to some semblance of life. When it was burning better, a blanket was whisked off the chest under the window and tossed across Aragorn's lap. Aragorn, half-woken by the noise and movement, murmured something unintelligible. He received no answer.

The loft stairs creaked, slowly ascendant, and Elrohir heard no more but for the wind in the chinks and the cracking of the rekindled fire.

**Translation: **

_hithlain-_a type of specially woven rope of Lórien, silken to the touch. As a lash, however, it is said to be one of the most excoriating of punishments. **  
**


	4. Chapter Three: Driven

**Author's Notes:** Edited 08.31.11

**Chapter Three: Driven **

_O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,  
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead  
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing _

_-Percy Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" _

_There was the scent and dimness of thunder in the room. A white bed and rumpled sheets, a woman, her colorless hair tangled about her face, swallowed up in it. She reached out to him as if to a lover. But he knew with the peculiar certainty of dreams, she did not want him. No more than he wanted her. _

Elrohir woke with morning light laying open his face with its edge, despite the drawn curtains of his bedroom where he had dragged himself in the grey hours. Squeezing his eyelids shut, he rolled his face into the pillow. But that only made him more aware of the foul taste of barnacles and salt in his mouth to echo the waves pounding against his skull and a still more urgent pressure lower down.

Slowly, slowly, he dragged his creaking body upright, attending his usual ablutions with a little more difficulty than usual by his unwillingness to look at himself in the mirror.

With the half-full pitcher left from his wash, he let himself into his brother's rooms, stepping over a pair of boots crumpled on the threshold like sentries exhausted by a long vigil.

Elladan lay on his back in his blessedly south-facing bedroom. By the looks of it, he still slept the sleep of the dead though the gusty breath issuing forth from his wide-open mouth suggested more a sleep of the utterly dissolute. The sheets bunched up around and under him lay nearly unruffled, so sweetly bewitching must have been the spell woven by their silken threads.

Threads which darkened to the color of raindrops as Elrohir unceremoniously emptied the pitcher's contents over the dreamer's pillow.

Elladan came awake with a yelp, coughing out a curse around the water in his throat. The watermark spread in an oval circle halfway down his shirt, slicking his hair all along one side of his face.

"What was _that_ for?" he demanded, mopping at his face and neck with a damp corner of his sheets.

"You are fortunate it was not the chamberpot." Elrohir slammed the pitcher down onto the dresser table, watching the flinch tear itself across his brother's face with satisfaction despite it mirroring his own.

"Ai, Elrohir! _Gently_."

"You have only yourself to blame if your head aches," Elrohir said though the black beat behind his own eyes throbbed with self-recrimination. "And it is a small price to pay for my humiliation. Were you not my brother, I would demand satisfaction from your _hide_."

"Last night—"

"Will be all over the barracks by now!" Elrohir overrode him. "My men respect—_had_ _respected_—me because I do not make spectacle of myself in such a fashion. Reduced to brawling like some baseborn knave! Bad enough when malcontents like Aear see fit to preempt me on the field; this will give them all the more reason to mistrust me."

Elladan pushed his wet hair off his face. "Elrohir-"

"I want him gone, Elladan." He prowled the length of his brother's room, residual anger and fresh indignation pulsing worse than the ache in his blood with every step. "And I have more than half a mind to eject him past the borders forthwith with my own hands."

"You will do no such thing."

Elrohir rounded on him. "You think not?"

"I dare say, you are upset enough to try," Elladan said, glancing ruefully down at his sheets. "But think, Elrohir, how will that look to your men, to Father, if you haul a guest and officer of Lórien out of his rooms by his collar? Think you that will silence their tongues or merely lend credence to their speculations? Now, still yourself. You're making me dizzy and wearing out my carpet."

Elrohir threw himself grudgingly into a chair. "Why do you defend him?"

Watching him as if fearing another outburst, Elladan slid out of bed and bundled up the damp sheets, dumping them in a corner. "To own the truth of it?"

"That would be a novel idea."

Elladan looked over his shoulder at him, and Elrohir gestured impatiently for him to continue.

"To own the truth of it, he is...not well, Elrohir."

Aragorn had hinted at as much.

"Speak not to me of _his_ wounds. I care little enough for them," Elrohir said, brandishing his anger like a torch in his brother's face to ward away the sting of an emotion he did not wish to name. He rose.

"Then care for your own!" Elladan snapped back with such vehemence, Elrohir turned, surprised. "This hatred of yours, Elrohir will only destroy _you_ if you feed it like this. It is not only I who worries for you. Estel and I love you and Haldir both. Do not ask us to choose between you for it is beyond our strength."

Elrohir did not pull away when his brother settled a hand on his shoulder, but he did not lean into it either. "You know what I do to those I hate, Elladan. He is not worth that sacrifice. He is but a thorn in my side, nothing more."

"Then, why can you not let this lie? What happened…was not Haldir's fault. He could no more have foreseen it than we could."

"Oh, sweet fool. That does not absolve him any more than it does you or I," But Elrohir felt no more heat, only weariness. His brother's touch had drained the anger from him. Only a poor knight could not protect those he loved. And only one who was no knight at all _would_ not.

As if guessing the charge of Elrohir's thoughts, Elladan said nothing nor did he try to recall him when Elrohir let himself out.

* * *

The air smelled sharp as a blade, razor-edged with dead leaves and silt and fish. Beneath him, the Bruinen unfurled its silver banners, wending through a passel of maples and oaks and larches. Adorned in their finest, they stood: pines sheathed in green spreading out towards the mountains. Far beyond the reach of eyes, the white peaks reared.

Elrohir's keen eye alighted on the road that wound its way under the colors. To ride within their company would be no shame. But he had given his word, and that word kept him bound here for as long as his father had need of him. Still, there was solace to be had in the company of the mighty, of beings older and stronger than he, who thought nothing of the petty tales men told to amuse themselves.

The old watch-post upon which he now stood was one of only a handful still on this side of the river. A scattering on the opposite side and more near the falls were all that remained of Imladris' marches. And most stood empty. With fewer and fewer taking the blue and white with every passing yén, there was no one to man the others. Most of those officers from the First and Second Ages—those who had seen the shining walls of Gondolin, had fought at Ost-in-Edhil and on the slaughter-fields of the Dagorlad—if not slain, had sailed or forsaken the battlefield, leaving only green boys born in the summer of peace to replace them.

Secrecy, cunning geography, and other things even more powerful served to shield the last bastion of the Elves east of the Sea better than any array of Elder Day panoply.

Yet the shortage was keenly felt by those who still manned the borders. Watches were long and often dull. In the later months, they were cold and comfortless as well. The platform upon which Elrohir now stood was even now bereft of its guard, who had seen fit to take themselves down to the stream to fish before discarding the bones of their catch to sport below with one another.

Two scouts were sparring with blunted practice blades and a third leaned his shoulders against the bole of a maple, observing them with a critical eye. Elrohir recognized all three though Aear drew the eye directly for he wore an officer's full dress uniform in bright blues and whites, and his hair was woven in the old style of Noldorin warriors out of Beleriand.

"My horse could do as much with a sword," barked Aear. "Get under her guard, Lalaith!"

Both taunt and suggestion fell on deaf ears as the unfortunate scout focused all of his attention and energy on turning back his smaller opponent's dogged assault. The young woman compensated for her weak left side with a staunch offense that had her comrade backing round and round their patch of bank in an effort to evade her. In his haste to retreat, Lalaith stumbled over a tree root and lost his footing entirely when a hard downswing set his sword spinning into the shallows.

He landed hard with an audible exhale, his opponent's blade hovering over his breast with not a little smug triumph.

"Yield," she growled, her hair sticking to her face.

"Yes, yes, by Valar, Tathariel, yes! I yield!" Lalaith laughed and groaned, squirming slightly under the prick of her blade.

She lifted her sword but not before chastening him with a light smack on the calf. "Rise then, o vanquished one. You have recompense to make me for last night."

Lalaith sat up and plucked at his soiled tunic mournfully. "Did I not just pay a weregild? This was a fair shirt."

Aear shook his head and sauntered over to the tree. "You should have had her in two strokes, my friend. Her left side is weak, her attacks all offense."

He spoke in Quenya, which sounded strange to Elrohir's ear though he understood it well enough. It was a tongue preferred for history books and wedding ceremonies, not daily speech.

"Apologies, sir," Lalaith replied, swiping at his brow. "Not my best this morning."

"Well, perhaps, that shall teach you to keep the company of better men than exiled vagabonds in tatters of chivalry and Silvan reprobates."

"I think you are a little unjust, there, my friend," Lalaith said. "The captain of Lórien is a knight sworn, and Gildor's men are hardly—"

"They are not our people," Aear insisted. "And must I needs remind you I hold rank over you, scout? You grow too familiar."

Lalaith's easy smile slipped. "Apologies, Lieutenant."

Tathariel snorted and stabbed her practice blade into the earth. "Yet they fought valiantly enough on the Dagorlad. My father says the Silvan Elves slew twice their number before they fell despite boiled leather and scarce steel between them."

"Still, they fell." Aear sniffed. "Tales of old, done battles. You should have taken up the harp instead of the sword, maiden. It would, mayhap, have pleased your father better to have a minstrel instead of a warrior for a daughter."

Tathariel flushed.

Elrohir's mouth thinned.

The prejudices of the high-bred houses of the Noldor were not new to him, but that such drivel spouted from the mouths of his own soldiers was not a thing he would gladly countenance. During his fosterage in Lórien, he had broken bread with Silvans and Exiles alike, had shared their fires and their stories, fought beside them and honored their dead on the _niphredil_-sheathed fields of Cerin Amroth.

And if the Silvan Elves had no liking for strangers, they were utterly devoted to their families and fierce in their allegiances to friends. As capable of generosity as suspicion, they refused no one a meal or a bed at need. Their warriors took to the trees because that was their strongest defense and the wood they served yielded ample dead growth for staves, shafts, and lances whereas steel came at a high cost, usually bartered or bought from those few merchants who ventured into the hidden lands over the mountains. Yes, they could be ignorant but no more so than such Noldor who had dwelt all their lives within Imladris' sheltered arms.

Yet the wrongs of one particular Silvan were still too fresh both in his mind and in the bandage about his forearm for him to leap immediately to their defense even if revealing himself to the younglings would not have caused him some embarrassment at being found out watching them.

"Our lord should have turned them back at the borders," Aear continued, fingering the hilt of his greatsword as he scanned either side of the banks. "Instead, they will winter here, drain our stores, and corrupt our men with their loose, undisciplined ways."

"For a loose, undisciplined reprobate, the Silvan put you on your back quick enough at the borders," Tathariel said.

"And I am told all that is needed to get you on your back is a smile," Aear returned with a knife-edged one of his own.

Lalaith stood up. "Now, Lieutenant, she is a lady and my friend. I will thank you to treat her with courtesy."

"Careful, lad. One might think you meant to threaten me," Aear said, his eyes darting to Lalaith's hand poised on the hilt of his tourney blade.

Lalaith licked his lips and loosened his fingers. "Not at all."

Aear suddenly laughed and waved a hand. "Oh, do stop scowling, the both of you. I but jest. My father was wont to tell me, my tongue ran afore my thought, and so it proves even now. I hope you are not angry, lady. I meant nothing by it, truly."

A ghost of a frown still marred Tathariel's features, but Lalaith heaved a sigh of relief and settled back on his haunches.

"Truth be told," Aear said, settling himself comfortably at the base of the tree. "I must admit to a little jealousy. After all, some of us had to stand watch while you slipped away to celebrate. I have heard tales already of some of our comrades' exploits. Is it true our good lord-commander actually drew a blade on the Galadhel?"

Lalaith must have felt his lord's hard stare on the back of his neck for he shifted and locked his eyes on the grass blades twisting between his fingers. He mumbled something Elrohir didn't quite catch.

"It matters not whither you would say or no. I can guess well enough," Aear said, resting his elbows on his knees. "I know of this particular Galadhel. He attracts trouble as corpses do crows, and other and darker tales have been spun of him before. He should never have been allowed passage beyond the Bruinen. How does it look for such a one to share our meat and mead?"

"He is a friend of the Dúnadan," Lalaith said with a shrug. "It would be discourteous to turn him away."

"If we open our doors to all and sundry, we might as well let the Enemy himself through our gates," Aear said, his eyes glowing. "A stronger marshal would set limits, boundaries…not allow himself to be intimidated by an interloper who believes himself above the laws and conventions of the Eldar."

"Someone like you, perhaps?" Tathariel tossed at him.

Aear inclined his head though with less humility than such a gesture usually deserved. "You are gracious to say so. And why not? My father was marshal of the barracks in his time. The post is mine by rights."

"The Lord Elrohir—"

"I do not doubt his capability as a warrior, but from childhood, he was raised among the Silvan Elves, and that is not well. He knows our traditions, but he was not born to them." Aear's voice dropped until Elrohir could scarce hear him over the Bruinen. "Besides, you are aware, are you not, of what they say of a woman who bears two sons at once?"

The sound of hooves cut off Lalaith's reply even if it did not slow the tide of blood in Elrohir's ears. A rider dressed in a courier's greens reined up hard beside them.

"I am in haste. Has your lord passed this way?"

Elrohir took a deep breath through his nostrils, realizing he could no longer conceal himself, and descended the spiral stairs wrapped about the trunk.

Lalaith scrambled to his feet as if a bear trap had closed around his leg, and Tathariel straightened to attention. But Aear only tilted his head, touching the very tips of his fingers to his brow.

Elrohir ignored all three and turned to the messenger. "You sought me?"

"Aye, my lord. Your father requests your presence."

Though the messenger's face gave nothing away, the slightly rueful quirk of his mouth suggested his thoughts well enough. He might as well have come out and said, "Your father knows. Best prepare yourself."

Too late, Elrohir heard the bell's sonorous voice, faint at this distance, excusing his father's councilors and captains to attend the meat and drink set on the board in the small hall. Elrohir should have been among them, sitting at his father's right hand.

Thanking the messenger, Elrohir dismissed him and turned to the three, who were still standing at attention, watching him uneasily. "Return to your post."

He held Aear's eye the longest before he turned away.

* * *

"Long has it been since I have had to excuse your absence at council."

The solarium was empty but for they two and a stack of parchment lying on the polished mahogany table that commanded most of the room. The Master of Rivendell sat in his accustomed seat at the head facing the door, his fingers laced together.

Elrohir stood so straight he was nearly standing at attention. "My apologies, Father, I…"

Elrond's upraised hand cut off his fumbling explanation like a knife shearing through a thread of gossamer. "I have no desire to hear excuses. You are my heir, Elrohir, and when I leave these shores, those who remain in Imladris will be yours to care for, not mine. You have responsibilities to them, regardless of your own discomforts."

"Yes, Father." Even though his majority was long since passed and with it the necessity of heeding paternal injunction, Elrohir hated that note of disappointment in his father's voice, and his talk of leaving pricked. He had been thinking of Mother again.

"I do not expect to have to send messengers all over the realm to summon you next time."

"No, Father."

At last, Elrond released him from his piercing stare and regarded the papers strewn across the table, his fingers shifting them a little aimlessly as if he were not quite sure what he was looking for.

"I hear the celebration of Elladan's homecoming was quite an event," Elrond said, not quite a question. "And Sadron noted that my crystal was missing from the sideboard this morn."

It took all of Elrohir's considerable self-control not to squirm. "I shall pay for its replacement."

"Elladan has already seen to it. Your brother wished to spare you, I think, and took some of the blame upon his own shoulders," Elrond said without looking up.

"He should," Elrohir muttered though the gesture mollified him somewhat against his brother. "I hope the council had something more important to discuss than barracks' room gossip."

"They did. It was Gildor who brought me the news of your exploits." Elrond looked up, and as always, Elrohir felt himself measured and found wanting in that stare. "Why I must hear of this from Inglorion and not you is what displeases me most."

Leave it to Gildor's well-meaning sense of responsibility to bring his father's wrath down on him.

"I did not see the need to disturb my lord with my…petty squabbles," Elrohir muttered at the floor.

"And as your lord, I do not give you council one way or the other though a sterner might frown on such behavior from his most respected subjects. You are grown now and must answer to your own conscience. But, I would be a poor father if I did not urge you to find some other means of settling your accounts than engaging in drunken quarrels."

"Yes, Father."

"Whatever else he may be, Haldir is a guest and a representative of Lórien. And your actions say as little of you as they do of him. I expect better of you than that."

Elrohir merely murmured his acquiescence again. It had been a long time since his father had dressed him down in such an excruciating fashion, and the hot sting of shame turned all other words in his throat to dust. He was and had always been very conscious of how his actions reflected upon his father. Even in his wildness after Celebrían's departure, he had striven to make sure the worst of his deeds had not reached his father's ears. And now, even when he tried to wrest himself back into some semblance of order, he failed.

Elrond sighed and sifted again through the parchments. His voice when he spoke was that of a lord to his captain, not a reproving father to an errant son. "Gildor's reports are disquieting, and our scouts have returned with no better news. One has not returned at all. Maegil is far overdue. I fear he may have met with some mischance upon the East Road through Eregion. But the Lady Isiel will not delay. Her daughter's betrothal has stood a year and a day, and they are expected in Lórien before the new moon."

Elrohir accepted the glass of lemon water his father handed him and drank deeply, composing himself before venturing. "I was not informed."

"I had hoped that Glorfindel might yet dissuade her. To no avail," Elrond said in a chagrined tone that showed just how formidable the Lady Isiel was if she could resist even Glorfindel's charms. "Gildor has offered some of his own folk, who wish to attend the winter festivities in Lórien and Mirkwood, in addition to our own to accompany her. But still, they are few and young, and Gildor's men have spent more time wandering the Emyn Uial than Hithaeglir's passes."

The mention of the mountains made Elrohir's skin prickle. He thought he knew the unspoken command behind the words. "You would have me go with them."

"As far as Lórien, at least. To Mirkwood, if you wish."

"I have no wish to leave Imladris," he said, setting the glass on the table. "I have duties here that will not wait a season or two for me to go to Lórien and back."

"Your duties will be seen to. I happen to have more than one capable councilor who has written a trade agreement or two in their time," Elrond said with a slight smile that appeased Elrohir not at all.

"You would send me away because you cannot in good conscience ask a guest to leave. Have I so disgraced you?"

"That is not what I said at all," Elrond said. "Though I do not deny, it would be wise to keep you and Haldir apart from each other. Nay, I do not send you away for punishment. I know you, Elrohir, and I know that you would do your duty by me as you have sworn. But a sword is no use at table, any more than a knight is in a council seat. You will linger here until your duty becomes your bitterness, and I would be no father at all if I allowed that to happen. There is much yet in Arda that you must do."

Elrohir was silent for a little, feeling all at loose ends. Had he not just stood above the Bruinen this morning and felt the echo of what it would be like to feel a horse beneath him again, the weight of pack and sword, the freedom and hardship of the road that would hone softness into steel?

"I had not known you were so dissatisfied with my work," he quipped at last.

His father smiled ruefully. "Sometimes, I wonder if your mother held you too long in Lórien. You and your brother are so accustomed to the freedom of wood and field and march. I see so much of her in you. Your restlessness."

"By which you would say I am willful and ought to do as I am bid instead of what I would." Elrohir snorted. "I had hoped enough of my father remained in me to do my duty by Imladris, which I love."

It seemed to Elrohir then that a shadow darted across Elrond's eyes: brief and unaccountably sad.

"There is much of your father in you too."

Elrohir inclined his head. "If you wish it then, I shall go."

"Good. I would have you write when you arrive there, and give me news of my youngest as well." Arwen's long absence tempered Elrond's smile. She had wished to see the land her brothers had regaled her with tales of since before she could walk. In her womanhood, she had come to love it even as they had as children. Though there was no safer realm than Lórien, even Imladris, Arwen's long abiding there was a small point of discontent between Elrond and their grandparents. The thought of seeing her again lifted Elrohir's heart and hope for the journey. It had been too long.

"I shall."

Elrond rose.

For a moment, the father shone through the mantle of the elf-lord as he took his son's chin in his hand: strong and soft from all his centuries of lore and herb-practice. Little of its touch had Elrohir ever known as a child, even less as an adult grown, and he was stunned to speechlessness by the paternal gesture.

"Go safely, my son." Then the elf-lord drew himself up and withdrew his hand. "The caravan departs early on the morrow, and Lady Isiel is not one to be kept waiting. You have much to do."

* * *

A pale glow ringed the oil lamp, and Elrohir's eyes itched with the lateness of the hour, but haste had never served well, especially in the wilds. Methodically, he looked over his belongings laid out on the bed, hoping he'd forgotten nothing.

Leather, wool, and metal cuirass felt strange and cold against his skin after more than a year of heavy velvet, silks, and samite. New boots of crisp black buckskin reminded him with every pinch that he could not break them in in a day. He touched the breast of his surcoat, the seven-pointed star of his father's house glinting between his fingers. It still fit well as he slipped it over his shoulders.

Last of all, he donned the worn leather baldric, the longsword nestling at his hip with the familiarity of a hand. No common armory-borrowed iron was this such as he used on patrols, but his own, presented to him at his knighting now centuries past.

Glancing surreptitiously into the looking glass, he almost did not know the man who looked back at him. The name no longer came readily to his lips. But something loosened inside him as he drew the blade. Straight as the ice cliffs of Fordwaith, it was a meter of reforged _mithril_ steel and wholly without adornment save for a deep-etched bloodchannel and the pommel engraved with the totemic symbol of his father's house. The Silmaril taken from the Great Enemy's crown by Beren surmounted by Vingilot, his grandfather's ship that even now sailed across the skies to guide travelers and souls through the darkness. It had borne other names throughout its rich and storied history, but it had earned every one.

It was Môrgyl now. The Nightbearer_._

_For where the knight rides, Night finds the Enemy. _

Elladan's words to him long ago amidst their shared darkness whispered in his ears as he held Môrgyl aloft in hands already trembling though _mithril_ steel was perilously light. It wanted sharpening, and he fished in the corners of the chest until he found a sliver of oilstone.

_Perhaps…perhaps…there is a way to be forgiven. _The steel seemed to whisper under the stone's rasping edge, and for the first time in a long while, the thought did not fill his very soul with fatigue for now it would be used for protection, not vengeance.

He did not know how long he sat upon the edge of his bed, swarf burrowing into his knuckles and under his fingernails. By the time he had finished, the blade was too sharp to touch, and the lamp had nearly guttered out.

He stuffed the rest of his things haphazardly into his waiting satchel then stripped out of his clothes and cuirass and unbound his hair. Ruffling the errant locks, he allowed himself a breath. In a few short hours, he would ride out. He would snatch a little sleep then go down to the stables to ready his charger.

A pleasant chill rippled over his bared skin like a lover's kiss and awakened gooseflesh along his arms and chest as he walked out into his outer apartments. The dark pulsed in little waves against his eyes as he groped towards the garderobe.

Hardly had he taken two steps when a very different chill crackled up his spine. The curtains were drawn across the oriel windows, drowning the room in shadow. Even so, he could feel eyes on him, almost hear breath that was not his own though his heart was thumping too loud in his ears to be sure.

"Who's there?" he challenged.

When he received no reply, he groped towards his secretary. It greeted him by smacking his fingers with its hard edge. Smothering a curse, he wrenched open the second drawer.

A match cracked and frothed between his fingers, birthing a pale yellow flame and the pungent odor of sulphur as he touched it to the beeswax taper on the corner of his desk. The sudden light made Elrohir's eyes water. When he had blinked his vision clear, he glared at his impromptu visitor.

"These rooms were _locked_." Trying to speak around his still guttering heart brought his voice out rasping harsher than oilstone against steel.

"The pallet in the lodge is lumpier than I recall."

Haldir had stretched his intrusive hide out full-length on the divan where Elrohir liked to read in the afternoons. Its pillows were caved in, and the thin, tasseled blanket, like a slain sentry, had been flung to the floor with galling carelessness in favor of the captain's grey cloak.

Elrohir strode to his wardrobe and wrenched out his sleeping robe. "Take yourself off to Elladan's quarters then. He'll accommodate you readily enough." He pulled the soft wool over his nakedness and knotted the cord tight.

Haldir had produced a little blue book from between two cushions and flicked a few pages idly, his eyebrow arching. "Why are you reading Quenyan love poetry?"

Elrohir snatched it from his hands, slamming it into a drawer. "Go. And I'll thank you to remove your boots from my cushions while you do so."

"I would, but neither brother of yours of fostering or of blood would give me peace until I agreed to speak with you," Haldir said.

"To what purpose?"

Haldir frowned at the shadows on the ceiling as if he found them distasteful. "They both are under the impression that I owe you an _apology _for my behavior the night before."

"And you are…here to deliver such?" Elrohir said, arching a disbelieving brow.

"No. It was just easier to come here than endure their nagging." Haldir crossed his ankles one over the other and tucked one arm comfortably behind his head. "If you'd rather, I can play the penitent well enough, wring my hands in distress and plead forgiveness on bended knee. But you and I both know there is nothing I can say that will change the way you feel and nothing you can forgive for which I have not already atoned a hundred times over. So, in the interest of sparing both of us a few hundred years in speech, which we could better spend otherwise, I would rather say nothing."

"That was you saying nothing?" Elrohir could not say he was surprised. "Very well. If you are quite finished, I have something of yours that begs to be returned, and then I would liefer you leave. I do not sleep well with strange bedfellows."

It was but the work of a moment to snatch the golden leaf from where it lay on his dresser, displaced by earlier efforts to unearth things from his bedchest.

The grey eyes flicked from Elrohir's face to the medal in his outstretched palm and lingered there for a long minute. When the captain made no gesture to take it, Elrohir thrust it at him.

"It is yours."

Haldir did not move. His glance wandered vaguely over Elrohir's shoulder, almost as if he were asleep. The leavings of his overindulgence still showed even in the dim light. His eyes haggard, skin sallow with too much drink and too little water and sleep.

"Elladan tells me you are unwell." Somehow, the words did not give him the small thrill of advantage he had meant them to nor did they immediately shake the captain into speech.

"In the South, they cut out a man's tongue for carrying idle gossip through the streets." Haldir swung his legs slowly off the cushions and plucked the medal out of Elrohir's fingers. "How did this come into _your_ keeping?"

"She had no more use for it." And had left it on her windowsill for him to find: the last thing she had touched on this side of the sea other than the faces of her children and her husband's lips.

"Ah." Long, calloused fingers turned the leaf over and over, the familiar letters graven on the face of the mallorn leaf flashing up with each turn. _Ever faithful_. His fingers closed over the words. "You are a fool. Caradhras will be snow-bound by now."

Elrohir fought to keep the surprise from his face and failed. "You have been listening at keyholes again. How do you know that? I have not even told Elladan of my plans."

Haldir gave him a withering look that said quite plainly he squandered entirely too much of his time answering stupid questions. "A good thing or a greater number of people would be aware of them. Better to take the High Pass."

"The High Pass will take us leagues out of our way. The Gate is the quickest path over the mountains and the most direct to Lórien and Mirkwood," Elrohir retorted.

"And some exalted somebody or other in your company has no desire to pay the Beornings' tariffs, fine. Would you also rather shatter a horse's leg on the Dimrill Stairs? How many are accompanying you?"

Elrohir had a suspicion the captain already knew the answer but gave it anyway.

"Twelve for Imladris, including myself," he admitted, hoping that quick answers would invite a similar departure. "Tîrion, Lalaith, Tathariel, a few others of my choosing. And several of Gildor's chosen. Well-trained, all."

"And green as summer grass, the lot of them."

That Elrohir had thought the very same thing himself as he made up the roster only nettled him further. "If I wished for your opinion on the matter, I would have asked for it. They are what I have." He rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. "I suppose it is too much to ask that you do not speak of this to Elladan or Aragorn. I would rather they not know till I am away."

Another pause followed, longer than the first, in which the only sound was the captain's fingers drumming out a cadence reminiscent of a martial rhythm against the char's arm. "_Off we speed to the foe and the fight / led by our loves and a bold, brave knight…_"

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes. I think even with their dubious observational skills, they might notice a caravan departing with you at its head," Haldir said. "Particularly if these 'well-trained' warriors of yours share your plans as they do gossip."

"They have both earned their rest, and they will wish to come with me if they come to know of it. I would simply rather they had no forewarning."

Haldir shrugged. "As you will."

Elrohir had not expected such easy capitulation. "Why are you so interested in my affairs all of a sudden?"

"What makes you think I am interested? Never mind, you haven't left Imladris by choice in a year...a long time, in fact..."

"My father asked it of me, and as his son, I am bound to obey his will in this."

"And above all else, you have always been a dutiful son," Haldir said.

Elrohir was not sure whether to make insult or issue of the strange tone behind those words, so he said nothing, waiting for the other's eerie woolgathering to come round to sense again.

Haldir raised his eyes to Elrohir's face. "So the Môrgyl will ride abroad. That is a dark road to venture down again."

"Do you think me unequal to the task?" Elrohir challenged, drawing himself up, "I may not have traveled much abroad in the last few years, but I remember well enough how to wield a sword at need, and I do not fear Caradhras."

"I told Estel your courage had not fled. Though, perhaps, your good sense has." Haldir's eyes alighted for the briefest of instances on Elrohir's cheek. There was something in his gaze that Elrohir could not name as he lifted the gold medal up. "This was a gift."

"A presumptuous one."

"Even so. Better bestowed where it is." The leaf clattered on the edge of the tall secretary, and without another word, he left.

The latch of the outer door clicking shut bestirred Elrohir from the fugue the conversation had left on him. Slowly, he retrieved the gold leaf from the corner of the desk and returned to his bedroom. The metal was warm in his palm. Ever faithful.

Unbidden, he found the end of the martial rhythm flitting through his mind.

_Off we speed to the foe and the fight _

_Led by our loves and a bold, brave knight._

_ O, what should we fear? We will not fly. _

_We soldiers whose duty is to die…_

He shoved the medal into the bottom of his satchel and blew out the lamp.

**Translations**

**yén**—144 years; an Elvish "year"

**Môrgyl**—lit. "Night-bearer." Also, by extension, Elrohir's epessë or honorific bestowed by others for his skill in battle

**End Notes **

**"You are aware…of what they say of a woman who bears two sons at once?"—**an idea shamelessly poached from Marie de France's lai "Le Fresne," a story where a woman is pregnant with twins, and her jealous neighbor accuses her of adultery, saying that it's impossible to have two children if two men have not had her. Aear is a punk, isn't he?

**Author's Notes**: Special thanks to all those who reviewed the last chapter: ziggy3, Sierra Leone, Yuanjia, Nieriel-mithril, kestrels, the Lauderdale and all the quieter ones who also waited patiently for this one.


	5. Chapter Four: The Road to the Angle

**Author's Notes: **Edited 12.23.12. Thank you to all of you who have continued to review and send me little inquiring messages—they have helped more than you know. Special thanks to Karen Wynn Fonstrad, the author of the _Atlas of Middle-Earth_, without whose thorough research I could not have inserted a bunch of nit-picky, gritty but crucial details you hopefully will not notice. And very special thanks to my two glorious betas whose relentlessness keeps me on my toes.

**Chapter Four: The Road to the Angle**

There are a hundred places where I fear  
To go - so with his memory they brim.  
And entering with relief some quiet place  
Where never fell his foot or shone his face  
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'  
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

-_Edna St. Vincent Millay_

_Awake! Awake! _

The alarum of nine bells jarred Elrohir from sleep like the blaring of battle horns, chiding him for lying abed while the valley had stirred long before. He had not slept most of the night, only allowing himself to drift a moment before dawn…Half in, half out of confused dreams, he lay there, blinking until the angle of sunlight and the sudden, urgent knock on his door sent him from the bed in a flurry. Dressing hurriedly, he fetched up sword and packs and nearly knocked the manservant come to fetch him off his feet at the threshold. He snatched the tea thrust into his hand by way of apology and took the stairs two at a time.

"Ah, the sluggard joins us at last," Elladan said when Elrohir strode into the stables, striving for calm against the pounding of blood in his temples and the sting of a scalded tongue.

Elladan tugged the packs briskly from his hands and strode off down the center aisle. "At least you had the sense to pack aforetime."

Elrohir followed him, noting as he did so, that the stables were largely empty but for a few grooms tending the garrons who would bear the heavier baggage.

His own bay courser was already tacked, much to his chagrin. He preferred to tend such things himself. He checked the girth and throatlatch.

"I have tacked a horse before, you know," Elladan said from somewhere over Faron's hindquarters. "In fact, I have tacked _your_ horse before."

"Yes, I know."

"You need not fear for your vaunted reputation," Elladan said tersely. "Aear has the men well in hand, and I told Isiel you were closeted with Father in close discussion about recent scout reports. Which, by the way, should be heeded. There is snow down the shoulders of the mountains already and signs of Dunlending activity on the borders of Eregion."

"My thanks. Since when do you rise at the crack of dawn to attend to _my_ affairs?"

"Since when do you sleep until the crack of doom, leaving others to handle your affairs? The Sun must have had her head turned by a handsome star, and the Moon is taking her watch." *

The attempt at levity would have fallen short even had the movements with which Elladan tended the surcingles not betrayed him. Something was wrong.

"If you have something to say, say it. I would not have us part like this," Elrohir said when the silence grew too thick.

Elladan looked up at him over Faron's back. "What could I have to say?"

"You are still angry with me about the other night."

Elladan's fingers paused on the buckles. "I'm not angry at _you_. By the look of you, you have suffered enough."

The arnica had not helped as much as he'd hoped. "Then what?"

"Elrohir, I know your mind well enough by now where Haldir is concerned. You are right. I thought a push might send you in the right direction, and instead, it brought you to harm. The fault is mine there, and I will claim it. I should not have tried to force your hand with him."

Of all things, Elrohir had not expected an apology, and he remained silent, afraid to break whatever strange enchantment had fallen over his brother.

"This is something between the two of you, and it will take the two of you to remedy and no others," Elladan continued. "I cannot say that your not telling me of your imminent departure did not hurt though. We have never parted before with hard feelings between us. And I would not have us start now."

"Leave it, Elladan," Elrohir said with a shake of his head. "It is past."

"Good. Because I would not have us parted at all. I'm going with you and Aragorn too. Fortunately, for you, Gildor is handier with information than you are, and he is willing to divulge it freely for a good cause—or a good bottle of tonic."

"Your offer is most generous," Elrohir said slowly. "I had thought you wished to remain here a while."

"I did at first, but…circumstances change."

Apologies were not Elladan's strong suit, evasiveness even less so. "I knew Aragorn wished to return to the Angle, and you will be an unlooked-for bounty, of course. But surely, others will think ill of you for abandoning them. You cannot think Haldir will stay here with you and Aragorn both gone. Even with Gildor's company here."

"You need not concern yourself with that," Elladan said with a stiffness that surprised Elrohir. "He left."

"Oh?" By the chagrin in Elladan's voice, Haldir had neither made his intentions known nor had Elladan been aware of his going until someone else made him aware of it.

"Sometime in the grey hours."

If that were so, then Haldir had departed shortly after his visit to Elrohir's rooms. A fact that Elladan, judging by his silence on the matter, did not know. Elrohir did not see the need to enlighten him just now—nothing had passed between him and the captain that would cause so swift a departure.

Somehow, being rid of the burr under his skin did not comfort Elrohir as much as he would have thought. It was less than sensible to travel any great distance in the wild, alone, even if the weather were fair and warm; to go on the cusp of winter usually indicated the kind of arrogance that flirted with madness or desperation. At least Elrohir had companions with him, few and inexperienced though they were.

Understanding of Elladan's sudden desire to take to the saddle again washed over him, echoing an old pain.

"You wish to find him." His voice sounded distant even to his own ears.

"I wish to go _with you_," Elladan said. "If we find him, so much the better."

"If he does not wish to be found, he will not be. You don't even know if he was going to Lórien. Or that he would take our same road. Likely, he has gone for the High Pass, and you shall miss him entirely."

"I know."

"Then there is nothing we can do." Elrohir slid the Môrgyl into its saddle-sheath and gathered up the length of reins in his fist. "Come. We are already late."

* * *

The caravan followed the roar of the Bruinen closely along its southward course through woodlands burning bright with crimsons and fallow gold with here and there a stubborn, paling green. Elrohir rode in the vanguard alongside the colors, watching the Silmaril banner of Eärendil flutter beneath the blazon of Gil-galad: white stars upon an azure field. Was it an ill-omen to carry the emblem of a fallen king from a line of kings known more for their glorious deaths in battle than long lives of peace and prosperity? Perhaps that was why his father had never sought the higher office, despite the insistence of many, including, it was rumored, the High King himself.

At least the inherent dangers in their journey were known and, unlike fate, could be prepared for if never quite expected. But not until the second day or so when the minstrel broke out his harp and engaged more than half the company in a lusty marching song to keep up their pace did Elrohir realize what was unsettling him. This was not a war party he rode with, a band whose chief duty lay in secrecy and silence. All, apart from the soldiers set to guard and guide them, were friends and family, anticipating a wedding, not grim warriors seeking battle with the Enemy. It was strange, but not unpleasant.

However, the journey proved less pleasant as it wore on.

Soreness plagued his muscles constantly, unrelieved by nights on the damp, hard ground. It became a luxury not to stink of horse and leather. The bread hardened; the meat grew tougher and saltier and less.

With the exception of Gildor's men, Elladan, Aragorn and Elrohir himself, few of the others had traveled abroad and some of their traveling companions had no compunction against letting their complaints be known, often and at great length. Elrohir held his own tongue. He would not waste his breath chastising such fools. If cold feet and hard bread were their greatest travails, they could stand to suffer a little.

But their speed chafed him more than saddle leather and annoyance. Even with the aid of their hardy little ponies, the party seldom traveled faster than trained soldiers would have on foot, burdened as they were. As they entered Eregion little more than a sennight on the way, the roads narrowed steadily, winding through bleak moorlands, until they had to go nearly single-file with Elrohir and Gildor's men leading, Elladan and Aragorn bringing up the rear to make sure none of the party strayed.

Away on their left, too far and yet too close for Elrohir's liking, white crept steadily down the shoulders of the Hithaeglir and the mornings crackled with frost. A chill wind blew unrelentingly out of the east that even the thickest-lined cloak could not keep out, and fog rolled out of the riverbed despite the feeble attempts of the sun to disperse it. Unfortunately, any insistence on his part to quicken their pace was met with resistance and more delay: from exhausted travelers and harried soldiers alike.

They met no one else upon the road during the day, and their encampments at night were quiet, spent largely huddled close to the peat fires save for the unfortunate sentries. Sometimes, though, when even the most restless sleepers had surrendered, Elrohir stepped beyond the firelight and there, staring into the darkness, he sensed or thought he sensed something, lingering, just beyond the edge of his vision. He had the strangest impression there was someone out there though he could not have said who or to what purpose. He called out, wondering if it was one of their people who had slipped out of camp without alerting the sentries.

Silence.

He took up a lantern and the Môrgyl and walked through the darkness.

He found nothing.

"Probably just an animal," Elladan offered when Elrohir spoke to him of it the next morning. "Or a bird. This country is rife with them."

"It was no bird," Elrohir said. "I cannot explain it to you. But I shall feel all the better when you reach the Ridge. At least there you shall have the vantage of height. If you push, you should make it a little after nightfall."

"You mean 'we,' yes?" Elladan said, arching a brow.

Now it came to it. Elrohir took a long draught of his tea and tossed another billet on the breakfast fire. "Aragorn is going to the Angle."

"Yes."

"I wish to go with him," Elrohir said, his eyes on the curling smoke. "After Gildor's report of Orcs, I would hear what news the Dúnedain have of the Enemy in the area. I would have you go ahead with the caravan, and I shall meet you in a day or so, two at most."

Elladan gazed at him for a long time until Elrohir met his eye.

"What? Why do you look at me so?"

A knowing smile curled Elladan's lip. "It is not like you to abandon your charge so readily. Father gave the leadership of the caravan to you, not me. Which makes me wonder what—or _who_—at the Angle could drag you away from your duty, and so easily."

Elrohir stiffened. "I _am_ doing my duty. The Dúnedain patrol this area regularly. It would be foolishness to pass the Angle without gathering what news we can."

"Ah. So there is no one you would see. No fair daughter of Dírhael—"

"Go in my stead then." Elrohir held his eye, but Elladan demurred.

"I would not deprive you."

"You are mistaken. Likely, I will not even see her."

Elladan grinned outright. "So, I am right. There is no shame in it, Elrohir. Goodness knows, you have pined after her long enough, and she is—"

"She is still Arathorn's widow."

Elladan's face sobered. "Elrohir—"

Elrohir dashed the rest of his tea into the fire and rose. "Aragorn wishes to leave soon. I must prepare."

* * *

Their intent to reach the Angle by late morning shattered when Aragorn's horse bruised a hoof on the stone, forcing him to dismount. The afternoon had worn away with twilight settling under the trees before they reached the riverbank of the Bruinen. No bridge or ford spanned it or the Mitheithel this far south. The Angle, long disputed and bordered on all sides by bleak, open or enemy country, could only be reached by ferry or risked by a perilous swim, doubled by the archers usually stationed on the other side. Aragorn flashed a lantern, twice, rapidly, then twice again.

"How long will you remain?" Elrohir asked as they waited for answer.

"As long as I am able." Aragorn's face was yellow and thoughtful in the dimming light. "Which is to say, not nearly long enough."

"Is it strange for you after being so long abroad?"

"It has not been so long," Aragorn replied after a moment. "And even when it was, I never felt about the Angle as I do of Rivendell. That is the home of my heart, in truth. Though a part of me yearns to share in their lives and their hardships here, I find I cannot abide long. There is too much I must do. Too much that must be done."

A dim spark sprang up from amidst the trees on the other side, and Aragorn set his lantern upon the ground near the water where it glimmered off the ripples against the rocks.

"What of you? Do you find it strange?" he asked, turning Elrohir's question on him. "You knew this land when it belonged to Arnor, then Angmar. You knew my people when they first settled here, when there was aught else but sheep on the hillsides."

Elrohir was momentarily at a loss for words.

How to explain the changes wrought by a thousand years when he was still struggling over the ones he read in his foster brother's face after a mere twenty? The Eregion that he had ridden through as a child and young man had weathered away: the softness of grass and downs hardening into rock and moor. This place was no longer the one he had explored with Elladan, even less so the one his mother had spoken so avidly of, the Eregion of her girlhood, when Ost-in-Edhil, the bright city, still stood in the south of the region. Now it was less than a ruin and filled with long shadows, the land silent and watchful. How could he tell Aragorn that in returning to mortal lands, he felt his immortal years in a way he never had before?

"It is…strange," he said at last.

The silence was broken at last by the swish of oars, and in the dim twilight, two figures appeared, one at the stern guiding a slender boat through the waters, the other at the prow. It curved slightly before turning towards them, grinding up the bank with a soft crunch of sediment. The figure at the prow leapt lightly out. He was young and dark-haired, new to Elrohir, but Aragorn smiled to see him.

"Ho, there, son of Aranlaith."

"Chief," the young man clasped Aragorn's hand. "We did not look for you so soon. You have heard the news then?"

"What news?"

"Hoi, lad, do you mind awfully grabbing the rope before I decide to take a little trip down Tharbad way!" his companion barked, fighting to hold the boat steady in the current. The Bruinen was still very swift even close to the bank.

That voice, at least, was familiar, and Elrohir smiled himself as the young ranger hauled the boat up a few degrees, and Halbarad scrambled ashore to embrace Aragorn with a hearty clap on the back. The ranger looked greyer than Elrohir remembered, but his lopsided smile shone as he gripped Elrohir's forearm in greeting. "My lord. Welcome, as always. And unlooked-for…as always."

"Indeed."

"What news were you speaking of?" Aragorn prompted. "What has happened?"

"Let's not speak of it here," Halbarad interjected with a sharp look at the young man. "Never know whose ears are open in this wild country."

Elrohir nodded once and turned to Tathariel at his shoulder. "Stay here with the horses."

"Yes, sir."

"I shall as well," the young man said, glancing at the elf-woman with unvarnished curiosity.

"Two are better than one. Come then." Halbarad held the boat steady as Aragorn and Elrohir climbed in. With a shove of his heel and a brief splash, Halbarad pushed them free of the clinging bank and out across the dark water. There was silence for a few minutes other than the stirring of the water as Halbarad rowed them across.

"Where's your less pleasant half?" Halbarad asked.

For a moment, Elrohir thought the question referred to Elladan, but Aragorn replied first, sounding oddly terse and distant.

"Elsewhere."

"Odd, that. He seemed your shadow for a while there."

"Or I his. But I make no claims to answer for the mind of an Elf. I am not his keeper."

Such bitterness was unusual for Aragorn, but his expression was too difficult to read in the gloaming.

None of them spoke again until they reached the other side of the Bruinen and pulled the boat up out of reach of the water.

Halbarad set off up the slope at a rapid pace along what might have been taken for a mere deer track had its flattened path not betrayed more hobnailed boot than hoof. "We have had some trouble of late though I'm not quite sure what to make of it."

"With all your disclaimers and hintings, neither do we," Aragorn grumbled.

"Dunland," Halbarad answered. "They have been crossing into Eregion more often than usual of late. Two, three, a dozen at a time. Sickness down the river, they say. But for every family of nomads or pair of travelers we see, there are others. Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, rough and furtive men, who take pains to make sure their presence goes as little noticed as possible. Some are armed with Rhûnic steel. Our enemies have made powerful friends in recent years, it seems."

In the days of Angmar the hill-men had ruled Rhudaur from the easternmost part of Eriador beneath the Hithaeglir even to the Angle itself. Even centuries after Angmar's fall, some amongst the Dunland tribes insisted, in accordance with their custom, that the Dúnedain had never reclaimed Rhudaur, leaving it abandoned and largely empty, so by rights, the land belonged still to the hill-men who had conquered it. Those with long memories and longer grudges resented the encroachment of the Dúnedain 'interlopers.'

"Some of our outposts have suffered an ambush, the theft of horses or cattle, or worse a wife who strayed outside her garth and vanished. Still, they are not so bold as to attack the Angle outright. I have been sending patrols out as I can, but our numbers are thinly spread."

"You have done what you could," Aragorn muttered, his face troubled.

Halbarad's face betrayed no expression in the gloom. "Malvorn's patrol went out to scout the Ridge. It offers a wide view of the land, and moving things can be seen for miles. They were to report back two days ago. Only this afternoon did we finally have word. He and his company had been set upon and scattered. Barely a third made it back to the Angle. Whether the others are dead or…taken, I do not know."

"The Men of Dunland seldom take captives other than women," Elrohir ventured.

"It's not unheard of," Aragorn said. "They might think we'd ransom our own."

"Aye, we'll ransom them," Halbarad said through clenched teeth. "With cold steel, if need be."

"I would hear what Malvorn has to say before I do anything," Aragorn said.

Halbarad paused. "He took a grievous wound. Gilraen says he may not live. We took him there straightaway, and Sarndil is helping her as best he can, but…"

Elrohir did not know who Sarndil was, but he had other, more immediate concerns. "We left most of our company heading towards the Ridge. They would have reached it by now or nearly so. Halbarad, go back to where you left Aranlaith's son and tell Tathariel, the elf-woman, what you told us. Tell her to make haste for the Ridge. They must be warned if the Enemy are still about."

Halbarad glanced mildly at Aragorn before he nodded. "I will do that. You know where the house is."

"Yes."

At the edge of the trees the deer track turned onto a dirt path, rutted by carts and pocked with horse hooves. Behind a low wall of sod lay leaning wooden makeshifts and shelters with here and there a house built of pale grey stone, smoke winding out of the chimney. The old days of the Angle's prosperousness were gone to dust, and the Dúnedain lived little better than wild men of the hills. But they lived.

Their destination was one such small, stone house on the very edge of the settlement. In fact, it lay outside the sod garth on a lane of its own that dwindled in the last league to flattened patches where the grass had been brushed aside. A line of willows betrayed the presence of a stream behind it. Elrohir's heart lurched at the sight. A niggling sensation that he'd forgotten something important washed over him, made his insides writhe and his palms sweat.

Aragorn, noticing him lingering, cast a sharp glance back at him. "Elrohir. Go up to the house. Your skills will be needed more there. Aid Gilraen as best you can. I must speak to those who were with Malvorn." With that, he disappeared around the side of the house whence the softness of voices came, leaving Elrohir to mount the steps alone.

The three wooden steps bled dampness as he mounted them, and he paused before the door like a murderer returning to the place wherein he had committed his crime. He thought of knocking. But of what earthly good was such a courtesy when already you had done the worst wrong to the person within?

His knuckles sounded hollow on the wood. A voice called for him to enter. A man's voice.

"If you're looking for doctoring, and you're not missing a limb, I'll beg you to—"

The Man checked at the sight of Elrohir on the threshold. He was grey and powerfully built with shoulders that stooped slightly from a life of long labor. He had a broad, not unpleasant face and rough hands with the kind of dirt so honestly ingrained under the fingernails no amount of scrubbing would wholly cleanse them.

He looked Elrohir up and down. "You don't look much in need of doctoring."

"No. Rather, I hope to give you aid in such. I am Elrohir of the House of Elrond."

"Sarndil son of Sarndor at your service," the Man said with a rustily courteous bow, slightly at odds with the way he stood, bow-legged in his stocking feet.

The Dúnedain were not usually so abrupt in his presence nor so open in their staring. From the nervous fluttering of his gaze from Elrohir's face to swordbelt and back again as well as the slightly paler hue of skin and hair, Elrohir gathered this Sarndil was not wholly Dúnedain but of mixed blood.

Elrohir cast a glance about the neat little home. The Man's boots stood beneath a workbench under the window, and his cloak and hood had been hung up on a peg beside the door. There were other, smaller signs of a Man's habitation as well: a shaving razor beside a basin, thick leather gloves on the table.

"I understood that the Lady Gilraen lived here."

"She does."

Catching Elrohir's look, the Man called Sarndil glanced ruefully at the razor. "I live just inside the garth, come over now and again to see how she's getting on. Lift and fetch or fix what she needs. It's not good for a woman to be alone, so far away. Strange folk coming and going at odd hours. No man about the place."

"She has endured worse."

"That she has."

Their eyes met, each understanding the other. Elrohir relented. "Is she here?"

She must have heard their voices for she appeared in the opposite doorway almost before the Man had finished calling for her.

Gilraen.

The sight of her alone set a rawness in his throat. She had gathered her mane into a leather thong at the nape of her neck. Here and there, pieces of it had escaped to rest along her temples like a silver tressure. The sleeves of a man's worn and stained tunic were rolled up to her elbows, and her palms were wet, freshly washed. No golden band shone on her right hand; presumably it lay in a box somewhere, safe from harm it might chance across in the course of her duties and labors.

"Your boots and blade," was all she said as she took his cloak and hung it up beside Sarndil's.

He removed them obediently and placed them under the workbench upon which lay a third pair of boots of soft, black leather. His eye was drawn to them for they had taken the place left by a Chieftain's old hobnails with a hole in one heel, and they certainly did not belong to Sarndil. The Angle had no deer with so fine a pelt. Indeed, a stag with such a skin would usually only be found on the other side of the mountains deep in the forests of Mirkwood or Lothlórien.

He followed her into a small, dark room where another Man was laid out on a pallet on the floor. A brazier glowed in the corner, sending out a dull, sulphurous heat that made the air swim with smoking coals and sweat.

"He was awake not long ago," Gilraen's quiet voice brought him over the threshold. "And has been off and on. I feared to give him anything for the pain. The scalp bled badly, you can see. I washed it with hot water and vinegar and sutured it. He said he does not remember how he was struck down nor who pulled him from the ground afterward…"

He let her words wash over him, as meaningless as the smells, as he rinsed his hands then carded them through the Man's hair, parting the clotted strands, prying loose their protective hold. The skin's agony was sharp and real under the sutures, crying out at its violation. Yet beneath it he sensed a deeper hurt like an echoing gong, low and troubling. It had been long since he had healed such wounds instead of caused them, and it took him longer than he would have liked to unravel the threads of superficial injury from its graver brethren.

"He was struck with something hard and blunt. The hilt of a sword or a club. It fractured the bone," he said, leaning forward until his nose was almost touching the dark hair. It was easier than looking at her. "I need more light."

He reached for his satchel and removed a small leather bundle, which contained, among other things, scissors, curved silver suture needles, plaster bandages, and the trephine: a surprisingly small instrument like a dinner bell, but instead of the clapper in the center, it had a sharpened-steel point, strong enough to pierce a man's skull at the temple if necessary.

He worked quickly and diligently, slitting and plucking out the kindly meant but misguided sutures, lifting part of the depressed skull back into place, removing pieces of bone fragment from the Man's scalp and hair. Malvorn woke once and groaned. Sarndil held him very still as Elrohir closed the membrane and the scalp laceration again, covered all with a plaster bandage soaked in garlic and vinegar to stave off infection and hoped that would be all. He stayed by the Man's side for a little after, aware as if from a great distance of the arching ache from his neck to his knees, of Sarndil gingerly placing the bone fragments in a small jar and even more gingerly laying a softened hand on Gilraen's hair, of Aragorn's step in the hall and low voices conversing.

The frail pungency of lavender wafted throughout the room like regret as Gilraen scooped handfuls of its dried sprigs into a small pouch.

She knelt on the other side of the Man, her fingers, very white against the roughspun pouch that permanently smelled of the herbs it housed even after any virtue of the plant had been used up.

"I had not dared to hold such hope that he would live," she said in a voice so low he almost did not hear her. She peered at the wounded Man's face as if looking for something.

With her eyes turned from him, he could glance at her. "You look tired. You ought to rest."

She only smiled.

The lamplight flickered through Elrohir's head. The room was full of long shadows as if the coals in the brazier had sunk into ash. The dimness turned Gilraen's still-fair mane to silver, and there were lines in her face that bespoke more than the toil of the night, beyond the toll of her few years.

She clutched the lavender pouch in her hand, but Malvorn was no longer at her knees. There was only grass and the darkness of a covered sky. She stood beside a windswept stone wall, staring out over the rain-darkened heath towards the willows as if their waving fronds were the waves of a mighty sea that might swallow her whole if she willed it enough.

_"I cannot face the darkness of our time that gathers upon Middle-Earth. I shall leave it soon." _

She seemed to look right at him, through him, her skin so white and clear, her eyes so full of grief.

_"Ónen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim." _

The words spoken in his own tongue rang a tocsin in his head, sharp and cutting, though her lips had not moved to utter them. He wanted to comfort her, still wanted to love her even in the winter of her widowhood and from the depths of his guilt. But the floor was sinking beneath his heels. His vision swam with raining darkness.

"My lord? Are you well?"

Elrohir came to himself with a start, disoriented and sweating in the heat of the small room. Gilraen was looking at him, and the light in her eyes smote him harder than any blow. Excusing himself with a need for air, he rose, almost stumbling over the injured Man in his haste and went out the door.

The privacy and darkness of the porch wrapped him in its folds. He inhaled the clean, empty night air deep into his lungs, his breath smoking between his lips as if he could dispel demons with that act, alone. He had not realized Aragorn had followed him until his foster brother pressed a cup of mulled wine into his trembling hands.

He sipped the warmth, heavily fragrant with mace and cloves, and the threads of his burdensome thought broke like gossamer. "It is a cold night."

"It is." The lamp-glow from the house traced Aragorn's features with kinder lines.

"Elladan should have come in my place."

Aragorn drew out his pipe and a small poke of sweet _galenas _from his pocket. "He would not have done half so well. He has been long abroad, and I doubt healing was what so engaged him."

"No."

"You have done all you can."

"And your man may still die. Why do you think such words would comfort me?"

A spark flared across Aragorn's palms and illuminated his jawline as he lit his pipe. It took what seemed a long time for the _galenas_ to catch. "I know it is…difficult…for you here."

Elrohir said nothing.

"She does not blame you, Elrohir."

"She put lavender under his pillow—as she did for you when you were a boy. To sweeten your dreams."

"I remember." A dull, ashen red burned in the pipe bowl.

"You were sleeping when we brought your father home in his shroud. I hoped then that you dreamt sweetly."

Aragorn watched the sparks flare and fade in the bowl as if he could read something in their haphazard movements.

Elrohir knew that he did not remember what he had dreamt then. He did not remember the hurt bewilderment in a young boy's face when he was told his father was dead. He did not remember fleeing from the two, tall, grim specters, who shared the same face and stole away family members in the night. He did not remember that the first words he ever uttered to them came only when he had reached his sixth year and Arathorn was beginning to fade from his mind.

"You look so much like him."

By the stiffening of his shoulders, the question had surprised Aragorn. Elrohir almost never spoke willingly of Arathorn.

"I miss him." He looked away almost apologetically as if he spoke ill of his living family by confessing his longing for the dead. "Particularly these last few years."

"Can you ever forgive those who took him from you?"

Aragorn neither moved nor spoke for a long minute, his face shadowed, unreadable. "Orcs took him from me."

Elrohir tore his eyes away from his foster brother's face, rubbed them, hard. Orcs may have put the arrow in Arathorn's eye, but he had been in the archer's path because Elrohir had put him there…because the staunch defense of his homeland against the Enemy had overspilled into a relentless pursuit of them. Ever since he had seen the light go out of her eyes.

But the words dried in his throat before he could voice them. He knew all too well how quickly condemnation could blight admiration, resentment poison respect, anger and blame befoul love. Aragorn would surely hate him if he learned the truth and have his unshakeable belief in his family irrevocably shaken. Elrohir could not bear that burden as well.

Aragorn blew smoke from his mouth in a long stream. "I have sent one of Malvorn's men to carry the word round. At first light, I will ride out with as many as can come."

Men's memories were illusory things, readily influenced by the vagaries of suggestion, the ease of rationalization and the interpretation of time that swaddled formerly sharp perceptions in comforting mists. It could not—or would not—retain everything lest it destroy itself in the doing. Not for the first time, Elrohir wondered if the Gift of Men was not only death but peace of mind and memory.

"You will seek the Dunlendings," he said, realizing Aragorn was waiting for him to say something.

"I will seek the truth of this matter."

Elrohir nodded once as Aragorn knocked the dottle out on the rail. "I will go with you."

**End Notes**

* An old Noldorin legend explaining a solar eclipse: they say the Sun has fallen in love, and the Moon takes her place for a little while she dashes off with her swain. It has also become a phrase like our "must be a full moon" when strange things happen.

**Translation**

_Ónen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim.- _Gilraen's _linnod_ given to Aragorn the year before she died (about fourteen years after this scene with Elrohir). It means "I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself."


	6. Chapter Five: Karmë

**Author Notes: **Dreamingfifi gets all the credit in the world for braving the muck of Sindarin grammar to translate the song in this chapter. Some of its lines are lifted from Chrétien de Troyes. I pray he forgives my (only slight) mutilation of his work.

Special thanks to ziggy, kestrels, and Sadie Sil for reviewing. Reviews are like getting miniature Christmas gifts in your stocking even when it's not Christmas. So those of you who are in keeping with the spirit of the season all year long, you are very much appreciated.

**Chapter Five**: **Karmë**

I measure every grief I meet  
With analytic eyes;  
I wonder if it weighs like mine,  
Or has an easier size….

I wonder if when years have piled-  
Some thousands-on the cause  
Of early hurt, if such a lapse  
Could give them any pause;

_-Emily Dickinson _

Steam unfurled from the surface of the basin as Elrohir stood barefoot in the cold kitchen. He laved his face and arms and the back of his neck liberally, gasping at the heat, how quickly it dispersed despite the rekindled fire. Rolling down his sleeves, he fetched the two tea mugs covered by their saucers and carried them into the back bedroom.

Gilraen was curled uncomfortably in a chair, a blanket about her shoulders. The grey light from the window fell upon a curl of her hair along her neck and lit on her sleeping face as if on a graven image in a garden. Beautiful and remote. As if she felt his eyes upon her, she stirred, meeting his gaze fleetingly before looking to the Man lying on the pallet between them.

"He sleeps yet," Elrohir assured her, setting one of the mugs on the small table beside her.

She swung her legs to the floor stiffly and reached for it. "What time is it?"

"A little after dawn. I'm afraid I could not find the sugar."

"I prefer it bitter these days," she replied, turning the mug between her hands.

Elrohir moved to the window. Outside, the fog lay thick in the lowlands and close to the river. The distance between the Angle and the Ridge was some twenty-odd leagues as the wolf ran. If Tathariel did not reach Elladan in time to warn him of the danger posed by the Dunlendings… But it did no good to look too far ahead or to worry needlessly when he could do nothing. Still…

"The Angle is changed since last you were here," Gilraen said. She was watching him over the rim of her mug, her feet tucked up under her.

"Has it?"

"There are less and less of us with every passing year. Those who were once young and fair wither and perish, and those who are young hope to grow old before they follow."

"You are still young and fair," he said, quietly.

She laughed, but it was the sound of a woman too wise to believe such lies even if she could still be flattered by them. "At first when I returned here, I could not bear the quiet without the least sound of falling water. That is why I had this house built close to the stream."

In Imladris she had always taken great delight in traversing the paths that wended beside the many falls. Sometimes, when time allowed, he had walked with her.

"Yes."

"Your father? He is well?"

She had said very little on those long walks. He had learned to read much in the cant of her head, the twitch of a shoulder, the myriad expressions that crossed her face. But rarely, a smile, laughter, a brightness of eye.

Tension sat on her shoulders now, an undercurrent in her speech that bespoke more than a long night in a chair.

"He is as he has ever been."

"And you?"

"I am well."

The chair creaked, her bare feet whispering across the floor as she came to stand beside him. He could feel her looking up into his face, but he did not turn, feigning absorption in the dim hint of light on the hills.

"You lie poorly, friend."

She was close enough that he could feel the warmth of her. He sipped his tea, its harsh, unsweetened tang filling his mouth. "You never did tell me why you left."

"I could not stay," she said, drawing the blanket tighter around her as if against some sudden chill. "Aragorn was a man grown. My task was done. The Elves had been obliged to keep me long enough."

He turned at that. "It was not obligation alone that bid us act as we did."

"Perhaps not," she conceded. "But I would not live forever bound to a man's charity."

"'Charity?'" The word stung though he could not exactly have said why, and he sat the mug down a little harder than intended. "Yes, well, I imagine Sarndil takes his wages out in trade."

"I owe you no explanation, my lord," she said, lifting her chin with the old, proud gleam of Dírhael's daughter in her eye. "I am not only Arathorn's widow. I am a woman. Sixty years is a long time to be alone."

Sixty years? So few? "I do not recall asking for an explanation, my lady."

"No. Far be it from you to _ask_ for anything. Even when it would be given freely."

"You have lived among us too long if you insist on speaking in riddles."

"Nay, my speech is plain, but you do not wish for the understanding. So I must speak plainer." She sat her mug gently beside his. "I had not meant to hurt you—"

"You did not hurt me."

"—with my silence. I grieved for him for a long time. I did love him. I still do. And despite myself I was grateful for what you did for me and mine that night."

She laid her hand on his arm, her slender fingers pale, the crescent shape of her nails sharply defined against the dark weave of his surcoat.

"Sometimes I think that our hearts can be turned is a mercy given us by the One to grant us a little light amidst a great darkness," she said in a lowered voice. "In Imladris, my heart was turned, against my will. And I fought with silence and coldness one with whom I longed to share speech and warmth. I lost that fight. But it seemed I had fought it needlessly. He, who had consoled and comforted me often with his mere presence alone, now fled from mine. As if the cold had reached him at last and blighted him even as it withdrew from me."

Behind them, Malvorn groaned and stirred.

Elrohir glanced down at him, but the Man merely turned his head the other way, his breathing deepening.

Yet his presence recalled the room they stood in, a room, a house, a presence Elrohir had not dared confront in sixty years. The last time they had stood thus together had been above Arathorn's shroud.

In Imladris, after the heavy cloud of grief had lifted somewhat, he managed to convince himself that he only pitied her sorrow and sought to assuage her anguish and loneliness. Elladan, of course, had exposed his pale justifications for what they were, forced him to unearth the root of his true desires.

But what right did he have to love this woman whose husband he had led to death? But for him, she might have been happy with a Man who could love her honestly and daughters with quieter fates to follow after her. He had been a curse to her. She had every right to be cold to him. He had refused to importune her further, whatever his own feelings. And now…

"It blighted me in truth," he said. "But the frost was…no fault of yours."

She squeezed his arm, her face very close to his own. "Does it plague you still? Even after all this time?"

The approach of a familiar step startled Elrohir back a pace, loosening her grip even as Aragorn appeared in the doorway, his cloak draped over his arm and boots in hand.

"Elrohir. Might I have a word?"

"Of course."

He followed Aragorn outside, but the feel of Gilraen's fingers remained, burned on his arm like a brand.

Aragorn seated himself beside the hearth and slipped on his boots. "How does Malvorn fare?"

"It is yet difficult to say," Elrohir said, taking a seat across from him. "He has grown no worse, which is encouraging."

"I shall understand if you wish to remain here. If he still needs care, there is no better to look after him." He did not look up from his boot laces as he added, "Gilraen would welcome you."

Such generosity in those words. Elrohir rubbed his arm, feeling an old, odd ache in his chest. "Even if I could do more for your man, I have said I will go with you. I do not give my word lightly. Besides, Elladan awaits me."

Aragorn glanced up at him as if weighing his words, truth and rationalization both. "As you wish."

Elrohir retrieved his own boots and the Morgyl from beneath the workbench near the door. The black buckskin boots were still there. He fingered the pattern of tiny, silver leaves tooled into the leather, part of which had begun to pull away from the sole of the left one. They were finely made, if worn, though more suited for the softer confines of the woodlands than the mountainside.

"He was here, was he not?" Elrohir asked.

Aragorn's quick, darting look was all the answer he needed.

"How long ago?"

"Two days before Samhain. The 29th."

"Was he with Malvorn and his Men when they were attacked?" It would be like him to be in the thick of things.

"I do not know."

"He did not return with them."

"No."

"Was he seen after the battle?"

Aragorn leaned forward a little as if listening for movement from the back bedroom before reaching in his belt pouch for tobacco and taking his pipe from a leather wallet about his neck. "One of the sentries claims he was startled awake—foolish boy, sleeping on duty—by a tall, pale figure and the flat of a saber blade. But that is all he recalls."

"Surely, Haldir knew to seek for you here."

"I cannot say what was in his mind, Elrohir. I am not given that privileged glimpse anymore," Aragorn said, plucking a glowing chip from the hearth and cursing under his breath when he singed his fingers.

Aragorn did not grow sharp for annoyance or even anger. No, he only grew sharp when he was afraid.

"What has happened between you?"

"_That_ is a tale too long to tell even to Elves," Aragorn said with a slightly wry smile. "Too many things. Too many of them dark and dangerous. But I will tell you this...In the South, I forsook all hope in our venture, and he would not let me give in to despair. He saved me. Now, when he needs the same of me, I cannot draw him from the thing that gnaws him. He will not let me."

"Some things even a king cannot heal," Elrohir said. "Some things…it is not his duty to heal."

"That is small comfort."

The scent of sweet galenas eased into the air as Aragorn's gaze turned inward. At length, he exhaled a long stream of smoke then said in the soft voice of confession, "He has not been himself since Fornost."

Despite the proximity of the fire, a chill rippled down Elrohir's spine at the name.

Few were aware of their near-escape from Angmar, who against all prophecy and hope, had returned to this side of the Mountains some twenty years before. Only the swift and combined efforts of Imladris, Lórien, and the Dúnedain had kept him from gaining a foothold again in the North and driven him back into the Wild. At a cost. *

Some of Elrohir's own soldiers in the caravan had either fought on that field or known those who had not returned from it. Aragorn had nearly lost his own life to save Haldir's when the latter had been imprisoned in the ruins of Fornost. Elrohir himself had taken a wound there that had left a pale brown scar beneath his hairline and a distinct fuzziness around the edges of events.

In nursing his own wound and the grief of lost comrades, he had allowed Elladan and Aragorn to see to the captain's care after they returned to Imladris. It was one thing to know in an abstract sort of way that Haldir had suffered at Angmar's hands. It was quite another to hear it from Aragorn's lips now, to see the pain and darkness reflected in his eyes.

"I had hoped in Rivendell he might find some assuagement…" Aragorn stopped short on words of blame, but if anything, his silence voiced them louder. "If I had had my way, I would have gone with him instead of letting him venture into unknown peril alone."

"He has been doing that for centuries without you, youngling," Elrohir said with a strained smile. "In his sojourns, he has traveled farther even than Elladan and I. He will look after himself."

Aragorn nodded, but his face was grim. "We had best see to the horses. The hour grows late."

The eastern rim of the hills was reddening far in the distance, but the light in the yard was still thin as Elrohir, Aragorn and the eight who had answered his summons assembled in the yard. To Elrohir's surprise, Sarndil too had decided to join their company.

Gilraen bid them farewell from the porch, wrapped in her cloak. "I will not tell you to be safe for it does not help. But I will think of you and hope that the Bright Lady guides your steps."

"She always has," Aragorn said, bussing her cheek. "I will return to you, Mother."

Gilraen turned to Elrohir and held out her hand.

He took it, cold and small, between his own and carried it to his lips.

A faint curve touched hers. "Am I forgiven then?"

"There was never aught to forgive," he said, squeezing her fingers lightly. "I will look after him with my life. You have my word." It was all he could offer her in good conscience.

"Yes. I understand." She released herself from his grasp gently, but she did not withdraw. Instead, she lifted her hand towards his face, her fingertips grazing his cheek. There was a look in her eyes he did not dare interpret.

"_Silo in elenath Elbereth o men __lín_, Elrohir." The old blessing fell sweet on his ears.

Her hand lowered, allowing him to step back. He bowed and walked to his horse.

As the company set out along the lane, he looked back once, but she had already vanished inside the house.

* * *

With only an hour's brief rest, they reached the Ridge just after nightfall and bivouacked out of sight in a stand of birch trees. Tathariel found them there, looking worn. She had ridden hard to reach the Ridge before them but had found no signs whatsoever of Elladan or the caravan. Just the Enemy's tracks mounting the southern slope. Two days old at least. She had not ventured to the top.

The horses were nervous all night, stretching their necks and twisting their ears towards the wind coming off the hill. Even Faron, who had ridden into the thick of battle and broken Orc-heads with his hooves, stood and snorted uneasily.

Before first light, Elrohir set off to investigate the southern slope with a young ranger named Brannon while Aragorn and Sarndil circled round to the south. If the Enemy awaited them on the hilltop, better to be few and unseen than many and ambushed.

The southern slope held little cover, save for clumps of gorse in early flower. Their yellow warning revealed the truth of Tathariel's words. The Dunlendings had mounted the slope two nights past, in pairs and single file. They had been careful, taking advantage of the dark and gorse until they reached the crown of holly trees near the top. There was no sign that they had come down the same way.

Elrohir drew his grey cloak closer about his shoulders and eyed the concave curve of the hill. If the Enemy had posted sentries who had their eyes and ears open, even Elves and Dúnedain would not reach the top unchallenged. Brannon stayed close at his shoulder as they stole up alongside the Dunlending tracks. The boy's breath heaved in and out of him like a bellows; his boots cracked every twig, disturbed every stone until the very earth seemed to echo. When they reached the shadows of the holly trees, Elrohir loosened his long knife in its sheath. Brannon promptly drew his.

Elrohir reached back and laid a calming hand on the boy's thin wrist, motioning him to remain behind the gorse. The threat of wounding at the hands of a nervous ally lifted, Elrohir turned to the holly trees.

The belt was about twelve meters deep in some places and ran nearly the entire length of the Ridge. The trees were old and had stood long, their branches arching and twining together to form a tenebrous, pillared wind-break that protected the more exposed clearing beyond from unfriendly eyes.

Yet their presence had not protected the Dúnedain.

Something else had though.

The Man lay a yard within the trees. Facedown and unmoving, already bloated; his dark skin and darker hair were matted with blood as were the roots and leaves about and beneath him. A particularly garish spray marked a trunk almost as high as Elrohir's shoulder.

Elrohir did not touch the body but cast wider about it. He found the spot where the Dunlending had crouched for a time, probably watching the sleeping Dúnedain, counting their numbers. He had drawn his knife, just in case, the steel unpolished to prevent a gleam. He had turned, headed back downhill to bring his fellows.

The attack had come sudden, from behind. No time to raise his blade or loose a cry. No time for anything.

His throat had been opened by a knife, if the arc on the tree and the wound that was not the fault of scavengers were any judge. Though it was hard to tell, the killing blow had likely been something curved, leaf-bladed, not dissimilar to the one Elrohir carried. The Dunlending had left distinctive prints in the wet soil and earth. There were no others.

A clatter of angry wings and the scorn of crows greeted him when he stepped into the clearing. The Ridge was empty save for the farther end where lay a half-score of Dunlendings. They had been stripped after the fashion of Dunlending burial, their gear piled at their feet. The birds and wolves had been busy these last few days. It was only in circling round the stones upon which the dead lay that he found another track.

It had an ugly, dragging look as if its maker were lame in the right leg, bow-legged too, shorter and heavier than Dunlendings as a general rule. Disquieted, Elrohir followed it to where it joined with the main track and disappeared amongst the confusion down the southern slope. For awhile, he stayed crouched beside the marks, staring into them as if he could conjure up the truth of them out of thin air. Men too were lame. Men too could be short and squat and heavy. There was no reason at all to think Orcs had been involved in the attack on the Ridge.

And yet…

Uneasy, he straightened and whistled up Brannon.

They made their way over towards the southern slope and found Aragorn and Sarndil coming up to meet them. Aragorn was holding a small, smooth stone in one hand.

"Three of our dead are accounted for which leaves four still missing," Aragorn said, passing him the small stone. "Someone had taken care to cover them. I found this sitting on a ledge above. Elladan was here. Or someone who knew to leave a message for us."

"Indeed. And the Dunlendings?" Elrohir said, turning the stone over in his hands. It had been handled recently. Carved fresh into the stone with the point of a dagger were _cirth _runes, used by huntsmen in the wild.

"They came down the south side sometime the day before yesterday and went off towards the mountains, but if our missing or…others were with them, they are well-guarded and thrust in the center of the group. The tracks are all blurred."

Elrohir nodded. He said nothing of what he had found. There was no reason to alarm Aragorn unnecessarily when he himself was not certain.

"What sort of markings are those?" Sarndil asked, glancing at the stone over Elrohir's shoulder. "Those are not the marks the Dúnedain use."

"They are older than the Angerthas Daeron the Dúnedain for those were altered by the Noldor of Eregion. Not all favor that method," Elrohir said with a wry smile. "They are common enough on the other side of the mountains and less easy for the Enemy to decipher. They mean that Elladan and the others were here yesterday and headed southeast."

"I do not blame them for not staying," Brannon said. The crows had begun to settle again, careless of their presence.

East, the Ridge rose into higher and higher foothills, Caradhras crouching above them, his sides steep and crimson. Elladan had kept on their road, following on the heels of the Dunlendings but not close enough to attract attention. He would look for shelter, likely, a place where they could hide from sight for awhile and rest as they had proposed. And there was only one place where a company of their size could disappear. One place where Elladan knew Elrohir would find him.

"We had better catch them up," he said, tossing the stone aside and striding off down the hill.

* * *

"I see nothing but rock."

"Because you are _seeing_, not looking," Elrohir said.

They stood high up on the shoulder of one of the foothills, the knees of the mountains tumbled above them, the boundaries of Eregion below. Before them stood what seemed a smooth rock face, worn by wind and weather.

"What is the difference? It is still bloody cold, and we are no nearer to the caves you promised," Brannon grumbled, tugging his fur-lined cloak tighter about his shoulders. It had not been an easy climb, and the dark had come early with long and heavy clouds. The air smelled hard and metallic. Snow was coming.

Aragorn took pity on the boy and stepped past Elrohir to lay a hand on the stone wall. "Go not to the Elves for answers, Brannon, for they will leave you with more questions."

His fingers grasped seeming stone and pulled. The grey cloth fluttered, revealing the opening in the hillside.

"Magic?" Brannon said, drawing back.

Elrohir smiled at him. "Not quite. The flax comes of Lórien. The Silvan folk there are marvelously skilled in weaving and have garments that can hide, even in plain sight. Useful when you are looking for a safe place in wild country."

The cave system was one of a few graven in the face of the foothills rising towards the Caradhras Gate, natural caves shaped and expanded of old by refugees of Eregion when Gorthaur sent his servants far and wide to hunt them down. Gildor's folk maintained and restocked them from time to time when they wandered through their old lands.

"The fit is narrow," Elrohir explained, unshouldering his pack. "I will go first. It would not do to surprise them."

The fit was tighter than he remembered, the walls so crushingly close on either side, he had to duck his head and slither sideways for nearly six meters before it began to widen out. The feel of damp dark on his face warned him as he stepped out of the tunnel's end. He listened but could hear nothing. This was but the entryway that opened into a larger cavern beyond and other little passages in the sides. It was likely Elladan had retired there with the others, to be sure of safety and privacy. It seemed careless though not to have posted a sentry, whatever the—

There was no sound of step or breath. But the air behind him shifted imperceptibly. Even as he turned, even as he drew his knife, a blue light flared, chasing the shadows up the walls in a firework glare and dazzling his vision.

The ringing impact of steel on steel shivered all up the way up his arm. Blinking furiously to disperse the veil of silver and black flares consuming his vision, Elrohir sidestepped, anticipating another blow. The only thing he could see of his attacker was the dusky brown of his boots swimming slowly into focus. They were Arathorn's boots.

Elrohir swore and lowered his knife. "That was not wise. If I had struck back, I might have killed you."

"Fortunately your sense is sounder than your reflexes," Haldir replied. "Leading with defense. Lazy Noldorin habit, that."

"As opposed to the decidedly Silvan tactic of attacking from behind?" Elrohir inquired. Though both of them had lowered their weapons somewhat, neither made a move to sheathe them.

"At least my blow killed my enemy."

"Where is Elladan?"

"Safe, for the moment. As are the rest of your charges."

Before Elrohir could press for a more direct answer, Haldir turned his head sharply and sidestepped behind the lantern still glittering with blue flame. Elrohir caught the sound of movement in the passage he had come from.

"It is I," Aragorn's voice preceded his appearance as he sidled into the small cave.

Haldir nodded an acknowledgement and sheathed his knife. "Estel. Good to see you." But his tone held a pale echo of the warmth usually accompanying such words.

"And you," Aragorn said, much more genuinely. "Now, if you don't mind, there are half a score of Dúnedain on my tail who are distinctly displeased with being forced to wait in the cold. With your permission?"

Haldir nodded. "Keep them in here though. The others are beyond, and it is crowded enough."

"I did not know you knew of these caverns," Elrohir said in the silence Aragorn left in his wake. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"I have been following nightingales," Haldir said, setting off along the side of the cavern towards another corridor hewn into the southern side. "Which, I daresay, is more than you have been doing."

The mention of nightingales brought Elrohir up short. To most, it would have sounded like a fair bit of nonsense to put off an unwanted question, but Elrohir had long suspected that Haldir was one of those unofficially known as _i Filig_ but in more respectful circles as _i_ _Dúlinn_.

There was a reason Elves were famed for knowing what was going on in the lands "as quick as water flows, or quicker."

"And what have your 'little birds' told you?" he asked.

"Something that you, Estel and Elladan all should hear. Go fetch your brother. We must talk."

Elrohir did not argue. He too was eager to see Elladan and ascertain for himself that all was well. The lilt of voices reached him long before the lantern lights strung about the cave.

The internal cavern was wider and higher-ceilinged than the entranceway, and water-carved rock formed smooth ledges up the walls. Arranged on several of these in the eastern corner, the members of the bridal party had spread furs and rugs alongside their packs. One of the musicians had even taken out his harp, encouraging one of the bride's sisters to sing with him. There was no trace of fear or unease amongst them.

Elrohir spotted Elladan sitting on one of the ledges, engaged in close conversation with Aear. The lieutenant spied him first, but Elladan leapt up and hurried over to him, profound relief etched in his face.

"At last! There you are. We were near to sending scouts out after you. What kept you?"

"I thought our arrival timely, all things considered," Elrohir said. "Is all well here?"

"As well as can be," Elladan said, motioning him aside and lowering his voice. "We came too late to help, but we buried the Dúnedain. We could not risk staying longer, and I am sorry my message was no plainer. What did you find at the Angle?"

Elrohir filled him in briefly about the attack on the Ridge, the captive Dúnedain and the strange, limping track he had found at the edge of the slope.

"But what on earth would an Orc be doing with a pack of Dunlendings? They don't traffic with the hillmen. Unless an occasional burned settlement counts as trade negotiations."

"I don't know. And I do not like to guess," Elrohir said. Aear was looking in their direction, and he sighed, feeling suddenly very weary. "Say nothing to the others until we are certain."

"Of course. They are anxious to press on though. They are concerned the snow will bar our passage."

"If that is all that worries them, so much the better," Elrohir replied. "As it is, we will stay here tomorrow. And perhaps the next day. Neither we nor our horses are as fresh as we ought to be for climbing mountains. Particularly if the Dunlendings are before us with…allies. It may be Haldir has better news for us."

Elladan frowned at him in confusion. "Haldir is _here_?"

"You did not know?"

Elladan shook his head. "Elrohir, I have not seen him since that night at the lodge. But he is here. That is good."

"I must set the watch first," Elrohir said.

Aragorn and Elladan were already seated and speaking together softly when he arrived. They had commanded a ledge, far back enough from the company so they could talk freely. Elrohir spread his cloak beside theirs and glanced around for the last member of their party.

"Well? Where is he?"

"He'll be along shortly," Elladan said. "You know how he is. He won't be satisfied until he's thoroughly searched out every possible entranceway and scolded me for leaving a mousehole open."

Elrohir made a small noise of agreement in his throat. A little way below them, the musician had beguiled the maid at last, and a clear voice rang along the stone:

_Meleth ben-thoss, bedh-rûth, ben-achas_

_naur bem-brass, ben-lach, ben-logas_

_Arad ben-Anor, Menel ben-Ithil_

_Rhîw ben-heleg, Laer bem-meril_

_Nîdh ben-glî, Lîr ben-linnas_

_Parf ben-dîw, mîr ben-annas_

_Meleth ro-vuin ir mistas_

It was a strange song for a maid about to be married to sing. Though it was little sung in the halls of his father, he knew well its tragic unraveling of the life of Amloth the Valiant, who fell in love with Tuilinniel, a beautiful maiden (as they all were in such tales) of an unknown court. But though she loved him in return, she spurned all his advances for he had a wife living. Not until the eve before he left for battle, a battle from which he would not return, did she surrender to him. When her lover's wife sent her news of his death, Tuilinniel went seeking him in the wild forest and was never seen again.

She was called Tuilinniel the Dark, but somehow he always imagined her with bright hair.

"Well? Do accommodations pass inspection?" Elladan's voice jangled through the music.

Elrohir looked up as Haldir stepped over his legs, budging Aragorn aside to avail himself of the corner seat.

"For now. It is snowing heavily and looks to last 'til morning. Is the watch set?"

"I know my duty, Captain, you need not remind me," Elrohir said.

"It is," Elladan answered, elbowing Elrohir sharply in the ribs and giving him an even sharper look. "Now will you tell us what you've found?"

Haldir settled his back against the wall and stretched his legs out. The lamplight cast hollowed shadows across his face like moonlight on tumbled stones. "I hear you also rode to the Angle," he said, ignoring Elladan's question. "How does Gilraen fare? I left in something of a hurry. I meant to thank her."

"She is well," Elrohir said, turning back to the young singer, but the song did not reach him now. "What have you found?"

"More than most, less than some."

"Haldir," Aragorn interjected, a bite of impatience breaking into his tone.

Haldir glanced at him. "Your old friend, the Chief of the southern Dunlands, has taken to slaving. It pays a better wage, it seems, than pillaging his rivals' clans alone. He takes those that he can find: the unwary, the traveling, the weak, and he sells them in the mountains. Probably for mining. Orcs never did like to do more work than they could help."

"So that _is_ the strange track you found," Elladan said, turning to Elrohir. "An Orc _was_ with them."

"You said nothing of that," Aragorn said, his tone quiet with accusation.

Elrohir fought a wince. "I did not wish to say anything until I was certain. I wish I weren't."

"You have seen them?" Aragorn demanded of Haldir.

"I followed them," Haldir said, fingering his belt pouch absently. "After they left the Ridge."

"And the captives?" Aragorn asked, a little gentler.

"Some half dozen or so. Most were from rival clans. There were four of yours."

"'Were?'"

"Were, are. I did not linger. Things were growing heated between the Orc-guide and the Dunlending. Haggling over the price, I imagine. Slavers always want more. Of course, the fool Dunlending doesn't realize his danger. He's in their realm now, and only so long as he is useful, does he stay alive. Once that is used up…" Haldir made a languid gesture that imitated a blade thrust forward at gut level and drawn downward.

"Were the captives harmed?" Elladan ventured, looking at Aragorn as he spoke. Orcs were not best known for their dutiful care of those left in their hands.

Haldir was quiet, but not as if he were thinking on the question. His eyes were oddly glazed, his face sallow in the lantern light. Traveling on foot from the Angle to the heights of the steep mountain pass, almost fifty leagues, in the space of four days was no easy feat even for the Elves who were near tireless. That did not mean they did not tire. Elrohir himself was bone weary after climbing the winding paths to the caves, and he had had Faron's aid most of the way.

"They are not as harmed as they might be," Haldir said.

"There is hope, then, for their rescue. If we make a surprise sortie—"

Elrohir had not the heart to tell Aragorn that Orcs who knew they were pursued were like to kill their captives rather than lose them, and the Dunlendings, who had no more sense than to follow such ilk, were like to do the same.

Haldir had no such qualms. "With what, Estel?" he challenged, cutting over Aragorn's words. "You have less than half a score with you against at least twice that of Dunlendings alone. Elrohir cannot lend you his own folk and still see to his charges. As is, they will have trouble enough getting through with the weather closing in. And who knows how many more of the Enemy linger by? This Pass is full of holes. You would go to your death."

"You speak to me as if I were a stripling still, Haldir. I am Aragorn now. A Man and Chieftain in my own right," Aragorn retorted. "With Men who will follow me if I ask it of them."

Haldir was not put off by the warning in Aragorn's tone. "Then, _Aragorn_, do what is best for _them_, and do not risk your life or theirs pursuing folly."

Aragorn looked long at his friend from underneath his brows then he said, slowly. "Other ventures have been tested against even more formidable odds and greater peril and proved worthy of the undertaking."

"Yet some would say the cost of those ventures proved too high for their worth in the end."

"I am not one of them."

But Haldir put his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. Having argued his part, he would say no more.

With nothing further to discuss, Aragorn left them to take up watch with his Men in the outer hall.

Elrohir could not help a tinge of admiration for him. Aragorn's tenacity served him well. But they could not go chasing the foe as if they were young hotbloods anymore. Not when they were responsible for others' lives as well as their own.

And yet…he owed other responsibilities too. Some would argue that those were greater than mere duty alone.

He followed Aragorn into the tunnel beyond, calling after him.

Aragorn stopped but did not quite turn. "Of all, I had not thought to hear from the lips of my own kin that the lives of Men mean nothing. I suppose since they are destined to die anyway—"

"That is not what we said and well you know it," Elrohir said, trying to catch his eye in the dim light. "We do not have the luxury of thinking only of ourselves. There are folk with us who have never seen battle as we have. They could never lift a sword in their defense any more than you could lay yours down. Would you risk them at the hands of Orcs?"

"No."

"Haldir certainly lacks for grace. But he is not wrong. Not about this."

"I know their names, Elrohir," Aragorn said softly, his voice gutted. "I know their wives and children. I fought beside their fathers."

"Then," Elrohir said, laying a hand on his shoulder, "when we have delivered our charges safely, at least as far as the Stair, my men and I will return with you to hunt for them."

"I fear by then, it will be too late."

"Then we shall avenge them."

Aragorn looked at him with eyes so like Gilraen's. Bright and grieved. "That does not bring them back."

* * *

**Translations: **_(The Sindarin grammatical structures are based on Ardalambion's layout and reasonable conjecture.)_

_karmë_- the ultimate art-form of the Elves, who had the power to make events from stories or songs literally come to life, so that they became visible to an artist's audience. A vision created this way was known as an _olos_, a word that could also mean 'dream' or 'phantasm'.

_Silo in elenath Elbereth o men __lín_ – "Shine the stars of Elbereth on your road."

_i filig- _the little birds

_i dúlinn– _the dusk-singers, also the nickname for a small circle of soldiers under the leadership of Galadriel who, essentially, are spies and go out into the lands gathering news of the Enemy and his efforts

_Meleth ben-thoss, bedh-rûth, ben-achas- _these are the opening stanzas to a very long lais from the Second Age entitled _I Duilinniel ar I Amloth _or _The Swallow and the Iris_. Alternating between the viewpoints of the two illicit lovers, it tells the story of Amloth, a Noldorin knight in an unnamed, perhaps fictional court, who mourns the love he bears for Tuilinniel (the only name ever given her), a woman in the same court, who loves him well but cannot return it because of his wife (you can see why this song is not one of Elrohir's favorites). There are many other verses, but those presented here run as follows…

Love without risk, without fear, without blame

Is fire without heat, without warmth, without flame

Day without sun, sky without moon

Comb without honey, music without tune

Summer without flowers, winter without frost

A book without letters, a treasure without cost

Love is more precious when it is love that is lost.

**End Notes: **

*** **A reference to _Dwimmerlaik_ which can be found on my profile.

_On the cirth and Angerthas Daeron-_ a system of writing, the most familiar of which is that used by Gandalf on Weathertop in the _Fellowship of the Ring_

_On nightingales-_ The legend of how Lúthien and Beren infiltrated the Great Enemy's stronghold and stole a Silmaril from his crown, defying death and tremendous odds is well-known to most Elves and many Elf-friends. Lúthien, the daughter of Thingol, a King of the Elves in the Elder Days, was called "Nightingale" by her lover. It became a symbol among the Elves and Edain of Defiance and Rebellion—since nightingales sing all night long, despite the darkness.

"_as quick as water flows, or quicker"- _lifted directly from _the Hobbit_, which does count as canon in my book, inconsistencies notwithstanding

**Author's Notes: **And now that I've bored you all to tears with copious footnotes and pretentious references to Old French poetry, please review!

Best,

Marchwriter


	7. Chapter Six: The Cruel

**Chapter Six**: The Cruel

a new mistress now I chase,  
The first foe in the field;  
And with a stronger faith embrace  
A sword, a horse, a shield.

_~ Richard Lovelace_

Despite the sun gleaming through fitful clouds, a fog of ill-will hung over the company. It began with one of the pack horses shying at nothing and losing half its baggage, most of it food down the mountainside. Another lamed itself on a snow-covered rock. As if that were not enough, the younger elves, who had not been made aware of the reason for the Dúnedain's presence, kept casting resentful glances back at the Men.

"Nice for that lot," muttered Lalaith as he walked behind Elrohir's horse, his hood pulled low over his face against the wind pouring down from the heights and pressing him against the cliff-face. "They get to stroll along with us as a wind-break and path-clearer before them."

"I did not think Men traveled in winter," Tathariel offered. "Do you suppose they're attending Lórien's festivities too?"

"The borders are closed against all but messengers from the other elven realms. And even they are sometimes refused by the somewhat…overzealous marchwardens," said a voice ripe with patrician righteousness. Fortunately, Haldir walked alongside Gildor's men in the rear and had not overheard Aear's remark.

The lieutenant did not trouble to lower his voice as he went on. "But you are mistaken, Tathariel. Festivals, say you? Nay. Those Men go girded for war. And just last night while on watch I heard some of them talking. They seek a band of the Enemy who took their friends captive."

"What? You mean there are—"

"If you three marched the way you bend one another's ears, we would have reached Lothlórien by now," Elrohir said without turning. "Spare your breath. You will need it. I wish to make the Stair by nightfall."

The three went quiet, but Elrohir's uneasiness did not abate. While Orcs or Dunlendings would not attack a company larger than themselves, especially in the daylight hours, worse things dwelt in and under Caradhras that did not fear Elves, Men, or _Anor_.

An unfriendly heaviness brooded in the air, and though the cliffs were too worn and exposed to conceal anything, eyes still seemed to follow them from the hidden heights above. The wind too seemed determined to cheat them of their senses, casting snow up in their eyes and chilling their fingers until they could scarce grasp the edge of their cloaks.

But Elrohir gave little regard to watching eyes, stinging snow or even bone-deep cold. Nay, what he hated most was when the wind turned, gentled, almost, and lurked in the cracks and crevices. There it called out, wordless, mocking them with wild laughter or keening like a woman trapped deep underground.

At the end of a long, hard scrabble downslope, Elrohir called a halt to rest the horses and break their fast at the foot of the cliff, but he refused to allow a fire. If the Enemy did not already know they were here, he would not give them forewarning.

They had come to a part of the Pass where the path, such as it was, was almost entirely lost, the only guiding points being the pine slopes upon their right and the hint of the valley's ending, beyond which the Dimrill Stairs thundered. Just ahead of them stretched a wide, bare trough smoothed by wind and ancient glacier.

It was a prime place for an ambush, and Elrohir did not like the thought of crossing it at all. At all.

He had not been there, at the time, but he had seen the aftermath and conjured it often enough in his dreams to hear the first arrows whining from the thicket, the screams of injured horses, and shouted orders as the guards swung their panicking mounts about, forming a skirmish line towards the trees. His mother would have been beside them, refusing with that stupid, stubborn pride of hers to remain behind the line, refusing to allow others to fight for her. To die for her. Even when they did, and the Orcs had trampled in their blood, torn her from her horse.

"Oh, they are there, make no mistake." Haldir was perched, like some strange bird, on a shelf of rock a little ways above Elrohir's head.

"The Dunlendings would have traveled slower than we, burdened as they are," Elrohir said without bothering to strain his neck, "It's not surprising that they would seek shelter somewhere in those trees."

"It is not of the Dunlendings that I speak."

He did not have to ask how Haldir knew. The heavy air, the eyes. There was no sign of a bird or coney for miles. Only the wind in the crevices feared nothing. Not even Orcs.

Elrohir glanced towards the others who were seated not far off. "Speak softer. I would not risk a panic."

Haldir kept his eyes on the trees as he took a swallow from his flask. "Did you know your grandfather has since ordered a patrol to watch the head of those Stairs? In case they were ever needed."

"Can they be summoned?"

Haldir shrugged an eyebrow. "It may be the snow forced them down to the Dale, or they may be ranging outside the outposts. Rations are usually lean this time of year."

"I do not think there will be trouble," Elrohir said. She had traveled the Pass many a year. There had never been any trouble. "But I have been wrong before. If you would be so kind, I would have you seek them. Take two with you, if you must."

Even politely phrased, it was an order.

Haldir did not respond at once, as if even in the direst conditions, he would follow his own counsel first, all others second. Then he whistled through his teeth, sharp and shrill, and beckoned to Gildor's two men, Ausir and Thúrin.

"Our intrepid marshal has need of our expertise," he explained, sending a spray of fine powder into the air as he landed beside Elrohir. "Hunting rabbits."

Elrohir dusted off his sleeve with a pointed look, earning himself a flash of teeth from the other. "I cannot wait for you. Neither our food stores nor Caradhras' grace will last much longer. We must reach the Stair by tomorrow, at the latest."

"Merely try not to do anything particularly foolish until we return. You can manage that, I think."

"Where are they off to?" Elladan asked, handing him a mug of thin, cold stew and a wedge of _cram_.

"Rabbit-hunting."

"Ah." Elladan leaned against the stone wall beside him, squinting after the three figures, already near lost to distance and the glare of sun on the snow. They were keeping well out of bowshot of the trees. "It is strange, isn't it?"

"What is?" Elrohir asked with limited interest. He had not eaten since the evening before, and then but little, and the afternoon was already advancing.

"You would not think it was the same place. With the snow, it all looks…smoothed and clean. Beautiful, even. Even without it, I doubt Caradhras keeps memories of the ill-deeds he shared in." Elladan fingered his mug and glanced up at the darkening sky. "I dreamt of it last night, you know. It is this cursed wind. It sounds like—"

"It sounds like wind against stone. Don't be fanciful."

"I'm not," Elladan said. He leant forward trying to peer at Elrohir's face. "Do you not feel it at all?"

"No. Lieutenant, what news?" Elrohir called with something like relief as Aear approached and saluted.

"I wished to inform you, my lord, the men are near-ready to move on. The Dúnedain, in especial, suffer from the wind and would much rather be down amid the trees." His face was carefully schooled, but Elrohir sensed more than a little of smug satisfaction behind his words.

"You may give the order to march, Lieutenant, once the company is ready. But we shall be keeping to the far side of the trees rather than amidst them."

If Aear found this strange, he did not remark on it. "What of the companions of Inglorion, my lord? Are we to wait for them?"

"They and Captain Haldir are scouting the way ahead," Elrohir said in answer to the unspoken question. "And, no, we will not wait."

"Very good, my lord," Aear said and turned as if to go, but he paused. "Perhaps it is my own ignorance, sir, but is it customary among the Galadhrim for a captain to do a scout's duty?"

Elladan laughed and cast what remained of his mug into the snow. "Haldir has never much concerned himself with…certain aspects of rank and duty."

"So I understand," Aear said, encouraged by Elladan's easy laughter. "It was ever a wonder to me why he was granted another commission."

For some reason, the comment irked, and Elrohir looked up at him. "You speak of high matters, Lieutenant. But unless you sit a council seat in Caras Galadhon, you do not know all that Lórien does or why."

"Forgive me, my lord, if I spoke out of turn," Aear said immediately, bowing his head. "But if you will pardon my bluntness…it is not Lórien's rulers I question—"

"I care not whom or what you question," Elrohir said, standing, "but do not be surprised if others object to your airing your opinions as _forthrightly_ as you do."

Aear smiled in a thin, self-satisfied sort of way. "Only a savage bloodies a man's lip to disprove his point. A lesson the Galadhel, hopefully, learned. If the stripes on his back may be any judge."

Fighting the savage impulse to bloody the lieutenant's lip himself, Elrohir said, "Might I remind you, Aear, that despite the past altercation with your father, _Captain_ Haldir remains an officer and an ally. His presence with us is akin to mine, and you will accord him the respect he deserves."

Aear cast his eyes down in seeming acquiescence, but the wind did not quite conceal his mutter. "And what do you consider that to be, my lord?"

Before Elrohir could reply, the ledge at his feet exploded in a shower of splinters. The stone, cast down from the heights, hurtled on down the slope. The sound of it smashing branches lingered for a while after it vaulted into the trees.

Elrohir touched his stinging cheek and stared in amaze at the blood on his fingertips where a shard of rock had cut him.

"Caradhras has grown tired of hosting us, it seems," Elladan said lightly, but Elrohir could feel his brother's pulse in the grip on his arm. "We had best get below."

No one argued.

They gathered up the rest of the company and scrambled the rest of the way down the slope, leading the ponies and casting uneasy glances back at the cliffs.

Once out of reach of falling stones, Elrohir steered the company away from the trees. But what looked smooth from a distance proved not so as they toiled along an ever-steepening trough that descended in deeper and deeper steps towards the Stairs.

They had not gone more than a furlong towards the valley when it began to snow. Thick and heavy and white until Elrohir could scarce see between Faron's ears, much less the other members of his company strung out behind him.

Quite suddenly, low branches were brushing his stirrups. He checked. They had reached the trees again. Turning Faron's head, he led them back out, calling to the company to keep together. But the path towards the valley's end continued to drop in ever-steeper, ever-sharper, ever-rockier angles until Faron stumbled and nearly turned a leg. Again and again, they found themselves forced right and up, to the very eaves of the pines, the very sight of which Elrohir had begun to hate.

The third time Elrohir tried to lead the company away, they were checked almost at once by a gully, at the bottom of which rustled a stream: narrow but deep and icily cold. There was no fording its banks.

Elrohir swore at the ill-will of Caradhras and hauled Faron's head around again. But this time, the bay refused, his ears twisting forward. His hindquarters rocked uneasily.

"What now?" Elrohir asked, his fingers already curling around the hilt of the Môrgyl in its saddle sheath. He had known Faron too long not to recognize the beginnings of fear.

Faron neighed, a thundering sound that could be heard for miles across open pasture. But here, it died almost as soon as it began, muffled by the snow. They waited a long moment before, distressingly faint and far off-course, Elladan's grey gave answer and several of the ponies.

Elrohir nudged Faron in that direction, alongside the wood, his heart thumping so loud in his ears he feared he would miss any others that replied. But none did. The Dúnedain horses were silent.

The wind had died to a murmur, but the pines still quivered as if agitated by a sudden chill. It had been long and long since Elrohir had spoken with the trees that grew here, but the pines were old. They remembered. They clamored as he rode beneath them.

Something bad had happened. Some danger. Branches laden with horrible things…bloodstained roots…

The rope creaked, straining against the wind and the weight at its end. The Dunlending had been hoisted into the air by his wrists. Five minutes and breathing alone would have been agony. Less, with the rocks bound to his ankles. He had been stripped. The tattoos on his arms and chest were nearly unrecognizable, but one, at least, looked like a chieftain's mark. Several iron pennies had spilled from the small, filthy purse shoved between his jaws.

An ugly fate, even for a slaver.

Snow creaked behind him.

Orodbenin started backwards as the Môrgyl hissed from its sheath. "It is only I, my lord."

Elrohir lowered his sword, but Faron still backed from the scout nervously. "_Anglenno, sadron_," he soothed. "Where are the others?"

Orodbenin pointed back the way he had come, through the trees. "Most of the company is gathered over that way in a copse, my lord. I nearly passed them myself, and I was scarce an armslength from them. It is this accursed snow! We feared to lose you in it, and we very nearly did until we heard your horse."

"Clever beast, that," said an evil voice from the trees just as something heavy and hard struck Faron.

The horse let out a noise Elrohir had never heard before—a wrenching squeal louder even than his neigh. Then he heaved upward. Elrohir dropped reins and sword and buried his hands in the horse's mane, standing in the stirrups to keep his seat.

Faron's fore hooves hit the ground again with a teeth-rattling jolt, but the saddle lurched out from under his rider.

"My lord!"

The cry came to Elrohir as if from under a grey wave. Slowly, it rolled back, and the sparks receded from his vision. His back groaned but bent though he could not feel much relief. When he made to stand, his right knee flared with hot fire.

Faron was already several yards away, stumbling over the haft of the spear in his chest. The one who had cast it stood much closer, red eyes smiling at him.

Elrohir groped through wet and cold for his sword, but the Môrgyl lay where he had dropped it. Far out of reach. He wrestled his knife from his belt and tried to rise, but the Orc was already upon him.

Orodbenin's sword knocked the scimitar aside, driving the Orc back. Elrohir did not see the archer or hear the bowstring. But a black arrow sprouted from Orodbenin's back like a grisly branch, and as he stiffened, the Orc struck.

Elrohir rolled behind the pine Faron had thrown him into as another shaft skinned the ground near his elbow. His heart thrummed hard in his fingertips, but not with fear. No, not fear. He would have one of them at least. After Orodbenin, he wanted the archer.

The arrows had come from higher up the hill. Keeping low and half an eye on the Orc with the scimitar, Elrohir crawled carefully through the brush, trusting his cloak to conceal him from any other of the enemy lurking about.

The Orc with the scimitar wiped his blade clean on Orodbenin's body. If he was at all concerned with tracking Elrohir down, he did not show it. Indeed, he leaned on his blade and glanced up the hill as if waiting for something. At length, he spoke.

"So, my little rabbit, where are you skulking?"

His baleful, crimson stare swept the trees. Elrohir, nearly on his belly, the snow soaking through his surcoat, felt its malice pass over him like an ill wind. The pain in his knee made his eyes water, but he uttered not a sound.

"Come, come. Twill be easier for you if you come out," the Orc continued, edging further into the trees. He dragged his right leg though it did not seem to hamper him much. "This fellow tried to run too. He didn't get very far."

The Orc bent over the Môrgyl half-submerged in the snow. Though he looked at it for a long time, he did not touch it. The blade gleamed with hungry light at the nearness of the creature, and the Orc nodded as if in answer to a question.

"Thresher, is it? Been a while. Thought you were out of it."

"Chief?" the voice of the archer came from the brush just ahead of Elrohir. He could see it now, close, crouched against some gnarled roots, its yellow eyes nervous, darting. It was clutching its bow with a shaft to the string, but it had not drawn it.

"Find him. Cripple him, but leave him wriggling. Our lord _tark_ will want this one alive."

Before the archer could draw shaft to string, Elrohir's knife bit deep into its forearm. The Orc howled with pain and rage and raked at him with a heavy paw, but Elrohir bore it over, pressing its chin back against the tree roots. He jammed his knife down and leaned on the knife hilt until it sank, grating, against bone.

It had hardly been a quiet struggle, but the so-named Chief just watched as Elrohir, panting, freed his knife, his hands sticky and wet with gore and saliva.

For a moment, they stared one another down across the space between them, then the Orc-Chief's gaze drifted uphill again.

Elrohir dropped quickly back into cover.

Two dark shapes were scuttling towards them: sloped, gangling creatures, thinner and smaller than the Chief, more like to goblins than real Orcs. They skittered through the undergrowth, looking about them. One, at least, appeared wounded, but even so they were too many for him to handle alone as he was.

"Well?" the Chief prompted them.

"It was just like you said, Chief," answered one who was clutching a bleeding shoulder. Its dialect was of the northern mountains, broken and foul. Elrohir understand only snatches. "Lugdush dangled one of the pretties from a tree, let 'em twist a bit, and the others came running like wolves to blood. Only we was the wolves. Netted 'em nice and neat as you could please."

"Any trouble?"

"Nar," the goblin spokesman said, but it was swaying on its feet. "But Lugdush is getting nervous after the rest of the lads went for their play. He's not keen on lingering around here, not since we saw the Elf-Witch's swine hanging about. Besides…" the goblin lowered his voice, "some of the lads are saying, and I'm not saying I believe it, sir, but they're saying that Thresher and Thrasher were seen with that elvish company our sneaks spotted. That they know, and they've come for blood like what hasn't been seen since the bad, old days."

"Did they now?"

The Chief turned and looked right at where Elrohir had been. Elrohir froze, praying enough of the deadfall concealed him, as the Chief surreptitiously surveyed the area where he had stood in mounting displeasure.

The Chief's eyes snapped back to the two trackers. "Who said that?"

"That one." The goblin pointed out his comrade.

"Gar! I never did!"

The Chief smiled and beckoned the protestor close. When the latter showed reluctance, he snatched the squealing goblin by the ear and dealt him a vicious blow that left him sprawling, nursing a bleeding mouth.

"You skulking _snaga_. What are you good for? Coming to me with babes' tales and bogey stories! I will tell you this once, and if I must tell you again, I'll bind you hand and foot and leave you under the Witch's eaves myself for Her to shrivel the skin off you. Thresher and Thrasher are _dead_, if they ever lived. All that's left of them are the stories told to make Orclings grow strong and scare _snagas_ stupid enough to believe them. The Elves are over. This is _our_ time. If you don't believe me, have a look over there. The rest of the lads should just be finishing up if they're anything like this one." The Chief kicked Orodbenin's body savagely. "Now, leg it! We've got to get our prizes down to the dark while they have their fun."

Fear wrenched at Elrohir's breath as they hastened back uphill. Once their footfalls faded, the crash of steel and the screams of frightened women and ponies cut the air with the clarity of a knife blade. Elladan.

Elrohir leapt over the brush and snatched up the Môrgyl.

A hiss of fear and loathing. He whirled, but the goblin left behind to ambush him had made sure to stand well out of reach. The bow creaked as it drew its arrow back. Elrohir was too close to miss.

Suddenly, a shadow moved behind the goblin. The saber flashed, once, in the dim snow-light, and the goblin's head rolled into the pine needles.

Haldir stepped from the trees, closely flanked by Gildor's men, both with weapons at the ready and bloodied.

The captain gave him a once-over and snorted impatiently. "Elrohir, stop playing in the snow. There's work to be done."

"Did you find the patrol?" he demanded, ignoring the throbbing pain in his knee as he hauled himself up. "Are they on the Stairs?"

"Never got there," Haldir said. "Found some Orc-scouts first. There's enough of them to make a dance of it. Come on."

They raced towards the sounds of battle, breaking from the wood and mounting the brow of a small hill.

Elladan had gathered the rest of the caravan in a copse to make their stand. But the Orcs had already broken through in half a dozen places. Even as they four ran up, Elrohir saw one of Imladris' defenders go down under three Orcs, slashing and stabbing at him.

A curious, wild heat swept over him, burning away the numbness in his hands. But scarcely had he taken a step down towards the Enemy when a hand seized the back of his belt, nearly seating him in the snow.

Elrohir twisted over his shoulder. "Release me! He needs help."

"_Think_, boy," Haldir snarled, without letting go his hold. "Snow or no snow, charge now, with those archers amongst them, you will have about as much success as Oropher and a great deal less glory. Wait."

"What on earth for?"

Haldir did not deign to answer, but Ausir sent him a quick, reassuring smile that did nothing at all to reassure him. Particularly when Thúrin bent down beside Haldir and muttered out of the side of his mouth.

"Are you certain of this?"

"Stop assuming I'm mistaken, Thúrin, and ready your bow."

Elrohir's grip on the Môrgyl's cold hilt tightened so hard, his knuckles ached. Elladan would be slaughtered right before their eyes, and all Haldir would do is stand and watch. He would not.

The captain's hold on his belt had loosened, and with a burst of strength, he threw himself forward and down the brow of the hill. The pain in his knee no longer plagued him. The Môrgyl hummed for blood.

It cleaved through the head of one of the archers before he could raise his bow. The others scattered like leaves in a gale. Wherever dark moved amidst the swirling snow, the Môrgyl struck, shearing flesh and bone and steel as easily as if it were the wind singing off the edges of the blade.

The air rang with cries and the songs of steel as he reached the edge of the copse. The reek of blood and sweat and spilled entrails rose thick from the ground. Something buzzed close by Elrohir's ear, tugged on his sleeve. The wind bore sharper teeth, it seemed.

Then a weight slammed into him, knocked him to the ground.

"_Down_," growled a voice in his ear, and a hard hand clamped around the back of his neck.

He thrashed, trying to throw his attacker off, but the grip on his nape and the knee in his back bore down like iron bonds until blood battered at his temples, and he choked, dizzy and half-suffocating in the bloodstained snow.

The pressure gave way as quickly as it had come. He jerked his head up, gasping.

An Orc lay almost beside him, a white-feathered shaft in its neck.

Haldir hauled him to his feet by his collar and shoved him towards the copse. As soon as they were close enough, Elladan darted out, snatching him into the brake.

"Are you hurt? What were you thinking? You might have been killed!"

The Môrgyl's hungry glow slowly gave way, leaving the edges black and dulled. There was not a single notch on it though it had sawed through bone. His hands though were caked with dark red to the wrists and quivered strangely as if it were his own blood staining them.

"Elrohir?" Elladan gently pried the Môrgyl from his grasp.

Without warning, saliva filled his mouth. Elrohir turned hastily from Elladan's startled face and retched into the snow.

"Oh, Elrohir."

His skin damp, his mouth filled with sourness, he stayed hunched over and tried only to breathe. Not wanting to touch his garments, he eased a handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his face and mouth, then his hands as best he could, bending down for handfuls of snow. The blood came off easily. It always did. But his mouth tasted foul, and his nose burned. It had been a long time since his body had betrayed him this way.

When he had composed himself a little better, he looked around, avoiding Elladan's unhappy gaze. Closest to them, Haldir was speaking to a group of unfamiliar figures. They had pale hair and pale eyes and were dressed in pale grey. Most of them carried bows of grey wood with quivers of white-fletched arrows at their hips.

"I did not know that Haldir kept a patrol at the head of the Stairs," Elladan said, handing him a waterskin, a little cautiously as if he fearing he might be sick again. "They spotted Orcs around the Stairs and followed after them. They saw us come down into the valley."

"And you, fool, charged straight into their arrows. I told you to wait," Haldir said, striding over to them, his nostrils flaring.

Neither of them, however, looked at his hands, which clasped the waterskin none-too-steadily, so Elrohir bore the dressing-down in silence.

"You need to get that looked at," Haldir said at last, nodding brusquely at his arm.

For the first time, Elrohir noted the jagged cut in his left sleeve. He spread the torn edges of cloth with his fingers and peered in amazement at the gouge leaping up his forearm. "I never felt it."

"Linwen!" Haldir barked over his shoulder. "Grab your gear. We've got one here could use your skills."

A woman broke away from the group of Galadhrim and trotted over to them, a satchel over her shoulder.

"There's no need for that. I'll tend it myself," Elrohir said quickly.

"You'll shut up and do as you're told for once," Haldir corrected him. "The Orcs are not far off, even now, and they'll return with greater strength once night falls. I want to be on the Stairs long before then." He turned to the Silvan woman. "Once you finish with him, come find me. Elladan."

Thus abandoned and with his knee truly beginning to protest the stress he had put it through, Elrohir had little choice other than to find the driest patch of ground he could sit on and determine not to let his impromptu healer so much as thread a needle until he was perfectly satisfied it was necessary.

She must have read the apprehension on his face for she gave him a guarded smile. "Let's have a look, shall we? Before I decide to lop it off?"

"That is not quite my concern," Elrohir said.

"I am well-aware of your concern, and I assure you," she said, "I am not one of those cross-the-River sawbones who would pull your teeth instead of stitch your arm. I have tended my share of wounds in the field and off for nearly six-hundred years. And most of those I tended live still. However, if you are unsatisfied with my credentials, I can leave you gut and bandaging, and you can do the job yourself."

Despite her spare figure, she stood tall in her greys, a sheaf of steel hard to break and even harder to bend. He knew when to give up the battle. Abashed, he shook his head. "I would, Madam, but my stitches tend to crookedness."

She knelt beside him, produced a versatile little knife from her satchel and slit his sleeve open to the wrist. Her touch was deft, practiced and gentle despite her hard words. He felt a little like a horse being handled for lameness as she prodded and peered.

"Luckily, this was one of ours and not one of theirs," she said with her head bent over his arm. "I'll clean and dress it, and you ought not to need stitches. That is, if you do not overuse it."

"I don't dare gainsay you for fear of your thorny tongue, Madam," he said. In the aftermath of the battle, he was feeling achy and tired.

"Then you have greater sense than most of those who fall under my care, Môrgyl," she said as she withdrew a field dressing from her satchel.

He winced at the address. The Môrgyl leaned against a tree where Elladan had laid it, but he did not correct her.

"Does your knee pain you, Sir? You are favoring it."

"Nothing that a little rest won't cure," he said, looking over her shoulder.

His men were shambling into the copse, some with injured comrades clinging to their shoulders. Lalaith and Aear bore one between them whose head lolled almost to the ground. They set him down a little ways away and covered even his face with his cloak. Why were they doing that? The soldier would not be able to breathe if they did that.

Ignoring Linwen's admonishment, he pushed himself up and limped over, snatching the cloak off. The face beneath was pallid as the snow, the uniform of Imladris disarranged and darkly stained about the shoulder and stomach. What was his name? It had not been so long since he had joined the guard, was it?

The maid who had sung the song of Tuilinniel the other night in the cavern sat nearest him. Her riding habit was torn. She looked at him with unseeing eyes.

"My lord?" The tone in Aear's voice suggested the lieutenant had tried to solicit his attention more than once.

"Yes?"

"Captain Haldir says we are to make for the Stairs with the wounded, sir."

Elrohir could not take his eyes from the dead soldier. What on earth was his name? "Yes."

Afterwards, Elrohir did not recall how he managed to descend the rest of the steep path to the Stairs. The world about him narrowed to the increasing agony in his knee and arm and the weight of the dead on his back. Now and again, one of the Galadhrim would pass him and say something, touch him, but he could not make out what it was they wanted of him.

It was a much smaller company that straggled into the birch woods at the head of the falls. Since the wounded could not endure the climb into the watch _telain_ and the disheartened had little desire to spend a night in the trees, the Galadhrim spread pallets and blankets for them below. They also built up a great cooking fire, enlisting those with fewer hurts to aid in preparations.

Ruthlessly cheerful, the Galadhrim sang as they worked, and after the evening meal, they brought down instruments: pipes, small harps, a drum. It might have been a night of festival for all it mattered to them, but for the sentries that prowled the edges of the perimeter, and further back, under the brush, the three silent forms wrapped in their blue and white livery.

A little way from the fire, pallets had been laid for those who wished for sleep more than song and dance. Elrohir, craving quiet, sat there with his knee propped up, watching as Haldir waltzed Ausir around the fire to roars of laughter.

Elladan dithered around him for a while, bidding him first to eat something he did not taste and then drink some tea which made him sleepy and dull-witted. Then Elladan talked until, out of sheer desperation, Elrohir snapped at him to be off and to let him sleep. To his credit, Elladan did not seem affronted but nodded and withdrew to find more welcoming company than Elrohir.

When he finally slept, he dreamed strange dreams of long, twisting corridors, a figure with pale hair beneath a heavy-looking knife. Doors opened into empty rooms full of wet moonlight.

The fire had burned itself down into embers when he sat bolt upright on his pallet, startling Elladan who sat once more beside him.

"Elrohir? Were you dreaming?"

"Aragorn. Where is Aragorn?"

* * *

**Author's Notes**: And there, I'm afraid, I have to leave you for a little while. The next chapter is partially written and planned out, but I have promised to devote some of my time to another fic, and with vacation officially ending, it's time to return, however reluctantly, to the grindstone.

Warmest thanks to my reviewers as always. Your thoughtful questions and generous comments help me know I'm not writing in the void here.

Best for the new year,

Marchwriter


	8. Chapter Seven: Into the Deep

**Chapter Seven**: Into the Deep

_Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,_

_Bitter, but one that faith may never miss._

_Out of a grave I come to tell you this—_

_To tell you this._

_ -E.A. Robinson _

The sharp-cut stairs with their rim of ice were difficult to navigate, and Elrohir did not trust his still-loosening knee enough to venture far along them. A good couple of leagues beneath him, the Stairs broadened into a vague, brownish land spotted with whin and purple heather. Beyond that lay mist. Though the sharp-eyed Galadhrim might have been able to see the fringes of Lórien, Elrohir could not.

"If we wish to reach the Dale before nightfall, we need to depart soon. It will be a slow road. The horses will have to be led." The shattering thunder of the falls swallowed his words almost before they left his mouth, but even if it hadn't, Elladan was scarcely listening to him.

"Elladan? Did you hear me?"

Slowly, Elladan climbed down to him.

"Aear and the others are near finished," he said. "Some of the baggage needed to be redistributed on the pack horses."

For the bodies.

Elladan would not say what they both knew. That Orodbenin, Cailwen, and Galudaer, who had died of his wounds in the night, needed to have baggage shifted so they could be tied to the backs of horses in order to reach Lórien.

"Yes. I know." The Dimrill's mist had slickened the stair with a thin veneer of ice, and even Elrohir's lined cloak did not quite keep out the chilly damp of its spray. "Have you looked to the provisions? We will not have time to hunt before we reach Lórien."

"Haldir's folk have been generous." There was reproach there.

Elrohir could almost feel his brother's yearning to speak like a hand pressed between his shoulder blades.

The snow had stopped in the night. It was not so deep as to halt a Dúnedain-bred horse. The wind was mild, the ice-sleeves on the trees flaking where the sun brushed them. Aragorn had crossed these mountains for the first time when he was twenty and any number of times since then. He knew it almost as well as Elladan and Elrohir themselves. Caradhras' peak, burnished bloody by the sun, loomed above like an up-thrust arm. He could not be lost.

Two figures materialized suddenly through the mist on the other side of the Stair, their features blurred by the spray. They cut back behind one of the falls and emerged a few yards higher on Elladan and Elrohir's side. Beads of water glinted in their pale hair as they lowered their hoods. The sudden rush of breath and hope left Elrohir.

Scouts. Only the Galadhel scouts.

One of them was the woman who had tended him the other day.

They were close enough to hail one another, yet she and her companion turned at once in the direction of a patch of birch trees, their pace quick, a little harried, like birds startled into flight by an unknown noise.

Something cold and hard slithered down Elrohir's throat and lodged in his stomach. Before he had quite decided the how or why, he was following, his strides devouring the rest of the stairs, careless of the ice or Elladan's startled question.

He caught them up beneath a white birch whose three-pronged trunk supported a platform in its branches.

"You have news."

Linwen looked at him but addressed her comrade. "Go on to the lads then, Thillas. I expect the chief will want to move after them, and he's not like to wait on us. Anyone belays, _especially_ Déorian, they're on the coals. Hear me?"

Her comrade touched a finger to the tip of a mangled ear in casual salute. "Aye, mum. More than my other ear's worth."

She watched him stride off in the direction of the camp, but Elrohir watched her, the twitching muscle in her jaw and neck.

"What have you found?"

Linwen put out her hand, tugging on an invisible string close to the birch's trunk. A rope ladder came tumbling down from above, its ends swaying against the snow. Almost apologetically, she said, "That must be told my captain first."

He waited until she had disappeared over the edge of the platform before starting after.

The _talan_ had the look of a rough outpost, not dissimilar to Lórien's northern borders, meant mostly for storing supplies. Swift and haphazard methods had made it into temporary quarters of sorts. If a brazier, a crooked screen and a makeshift heap of furs and blankets could be called quarters.

Haldir stooped over a battered tin basin under the brazier, laving his face and naked arms while Linwen spoke low and urgently in his ear. Elrohir heard only one word that mattered: Dúnedain.

His breath escaped in a hiss that drew Haldir's attention. But the captain only wiped his face on his cloak and addressed Linwen. "Get the lads kitted out. Four down to the Dale. The rest with me. And go ask Ausir and Thúrin if they have any festivities planned before Yule."

"Aye, sir."

Elrohir waited until she had brushed past him. "The Dúnedain have been found?"

Haldir flipped the buckle on his satchel and began riffling through it. The holly tree spread across the length of his back, each silvery leaf and branch sharply defined; the leaves were furled, the berries tight and hard.

"How fare your folk?"

Elrohir muzzled his impatience with difficulty. Quicker to answer than to insist. "They are managing."

"They will be better when they reach Lórien. I would send a few of mine on with you to ease the journey."

"That is…generous," Elrohir said.

"Generosity has nothing to do with it." Haldir lifted out a crumpled linen shirt that might have been white at one time and shook it out. "Your grandsire would have my head and more besides if I let you depart with such paltry numbers after what happened. Besides, you will need the extra hands and a horse or two. Lórien is a few days' hence. Somehow, I don't imagine the pretty bride will be all too pleased if her packs become perfumed with anything other than horse-sweat during the journey."

A muscle tightened in Elrohir's jaw. "Those are my men you speak of."

"Not anymore." Haldir raised the linen briefly to his nose before dropping it over his head. "At least it is cold."

Beyond the talan they stood on, in other trees, sat other telain. Grey-clad figures were moving in them, up and down ladders, stalking across bridges scarce a handspan across.

"You are remaining here."

Haldir slipped his arms through a surcoat's wide grey sleeves, his fingers moving over the clasps, quick and purposeful. "Yes."

"Will you give chase? The Dunlendings? The Orcs?"

"The Dunlendings have gone back to their hills by the looks of things. Their _duty_ is discharged. The Orcs...should not trouble you any longer, so long as you make the Stair by nightfall and follow the Celebrant once you reach the Dale."

Haldir pulled his hair out of his collar and bound it back into a loose tail before fetching his sword belt from the floor. He kept moving about, adjusting things, going to his pack and rifling through it a second time, refusing to meet Elrohir's eyes. Not nervous. Intent. A hound with the scent of blood in his nose.

Elrohir frowned. "What _is_ it?"

"Nothing you need concern yourself with, my lord."

The formality of it jarred. Meant to put him off. Go no further. Here lie monsters. "Something has happened. You are not usually so-"

"Merely ensuring that all is as it should be." He tore a drape off a pile of things and fished out a canvas sack.

"Do not do that. I am not some Noldor swell you must placate with assurances, Captain. Nor do I appreciate being hooded. Stop searching for whatever you're searching for, and tell me. I know it has something to do with Aragorn."

"Very well." The canvas sack hit the floor with a heavy thump. "He did exactly what I told him not to. And they were ready. My scouts found the four captives-what was left of them-back amidst the pines. The Orcs and their Dunlending allies used them to draw the Dúnedain into an ambush."

The truth in his face that he had guessed but not _known_, Elrohir felt the floor recede beneath his feet, the boards suddenly too insubstantial to hold him, to keep him from plummeting earthward. A slender bit of birch and pitch, that was all.

He walked steadily against the beat of blood in his ears to the brazier. A vague sort of hollowness ate at him, like hunger. Like the loss of too much blood. Shock, he thought: the body's internal alarum to a negative, outside stimulus. And it was strange how knowing the condition did not ameliorate the effects at all.

Haldir was speaking. "-not among the dead."

The bandage Linwen had wrapped around his arm pressed against his sleeve. It chafed. Rolling up his sleeve, he tore the bandage off and dropped it amidst the coals. The linen smoked in its dampness and curled in on itself. A prickling almost-pain stung his arm where the cut of the Galadhrim arrow had sliced. A bead of blood welled up against his skin. But the ground reappeared beneath his feet, solid wood planks, hard pitch. Steady. Steady.

He pulled his sleeve down, aware the silence had lasted too long and Haldir was watching.

"If the Orcs intended to kill all the Dúnedain, they would have done so. That means Aragorn may yet be alive. Where did they lead them?" When Haldir did not answer, he turned. "Where? Someone must go. We must go and search for him."

"That someone will not be you."

The dull heat washed over his face, the smoke clawing at his eyes until he stepped away. "You cannot expect me to stand by and do naught."

"No. I expect you to do your duty: take your charges and what is left of your men to safety, to Lórien."

Elrohir took a step forward and stopped, straightened his shoulders, peeled the pleading out of his voice. "I do not wish to remind you, Captain, that I outrank you. And though I cannot compel you, it is not for you to say any longer what I may or may not do."

"And what kind of force can you muster, may I ask, my lord marshal?"

"My men are more than capable."

"Your _men_ are greener than the buds on this birch. And what of your charges? Will you leave them for the wolves?"

"You have already volunteered some of your men. But lend me a few more to guard them."

"They are _your_ charge. _Your_ responsibility."

"Either lend me your aid, or get out of my way."

A jolt arched up Elrohir's spine and neck as if the captain's challenging stare held the taut weight of antlers behind it.

Elrohir's breathing was loud in the silence, too loud, and he opened his mouth a little for breath, but words slipped out instead. "I made a promise to a woman that I would look after her son with my life. I cannot fail in her trust. Again."

Haldir did not look away, but his gaze seemed to go through Elrohir as if looking at something beyond him. Elrohir shook himself loose. His tunic clung clammy to his sides and back.

He had almost reached the ladder when Haldir spoke softly over his shoulder.

"They have taken him underground. Into the dark. Do you understand? There are a hundred, hundred holes down there. A hundred, hundred passages and corridors and halls and deeps. Can you say you know them all? Can those _boys_ of yours track over stone? The Enemy has all the advantage. Even if by some miracle, you find him whole, who's to say you will find the way out again? This is not the _lais_ of Lúthien, my boy. No song will open those pits. Make no mistake. Either you will fail to find Estel, or the Enemy will not fail to find you."

"We did it once before. Twice, in fact, if you remember."

The birch tree cast fragmented shadows across Haldir's face.

"Do not _ever_ tell me what I owe Estel, Elrohir. I ken it better than you. Fortune favors the third. Is that what you would tell me? But the dark exacts its price. It does not let you go for nothing, if it lets you go. Tell me this before you go haring off after death. Would you let your life-Elladan's?-be weregild for Estel's?"

"You know what he is to us. What he is or was to you." Elrohir maneuvered himself over the edge of the platform, catching himself on the ladder's swaying rungs. "I will not leave him in their hands."

* * *

All thought had come to a sharp point in his head. The way was clear. His mind was quiet, steady, empty of the past and its failures, empty of thoughts of Aragorn and where he might be. To dwell on that would be to waste time.

All he had to do now was move.

Elladan was waiting for him at the camp and looked up with a question in his face when Elrohir stood before the breakfast fire and his assembled men. Elrohir avoided his gaze and the accusatory ones of some of the caravan while he explained the situation. Already the morning was wearing away.

"The Dúnedain have long been our allies and aided us in every need. If there is a chance that they live, we need to seize it soonest. Secrecy and speed will serve us better than numbers. Those I name will go with me. The rest of you will keep to your duty and carry the word on to Lórien. This is vital."

They all tried hard for bravado when his eyes moved over them, and for that, he was proud and grateful. Not one of them would forsake the darker road for fear of it. But he knew better. The ones who had the best chance of withstanding the dark were the ones who already knew they feared it, were armed a little against it.

"Aear. Lalaith. Tathariel." He plucked the strings of their lives one by one and hoped that his choice was fair. It could not be right.

The others dispersed, some muttering, some turning their faces aside quickly to hide their relief and shame. Elrohir let them go and addressed the three soldiers who had remained, standing very straight.

"Change into your plain tunics, draw extra field rations and torches, and fill your water skins. Leave everything that can be spared behind. Be quick."

Aear nodded briskly and turned to his two companions, chiding them along and listing what they could afford to take with them and what they could abandon.

Elladan rose. "It won't take me but a moment to fetch what I need."

"I need you to go on to Lórien," Elrohir told him. "The others will need you, and our grandsire will need to know."

"Rot," Elladan said, cheerfully. "Any courier can do as much. You will need me more."

"I need you safe."

Elladan merely smiled and spread his hands. And that was that. They went for their gear.

"Elrohir, I know you probably do not wish to hear this. But did you ask—?"

Elrohir crouched beside his pack and rolled up his blanket, tight and small. "I told him he could help us if he wished."

Elladan sighed.

"I cannot ask."

"Pride will have us at cross-purposes. He was the one who found her. We would never have found her."

"Not because of that." Elrohir darted a quick look up at his brother, but he could not put what he thought into plainer words. He did not understand himself what he had seen in Haldir's eyes, heard in his voice.

He tightened the straps on his pack with a jerk and swung it over his shoulder. A little ways away from them, the remainder of his men and the Galadhel scouts were saddling up with the caravan. The young bride still wore her bloodstained habit, her eyes set straight ahead. He was glad she did not look at him.

Gathering up Aear, Tathariel and Lalaith, dressed now in plain greens and browns with only a haversack and bedroll apiece, he sought out Linwen, who was lingering at the edge of the camp, overseeing a few of her fellows who were putting the finishing touches on their provisions and talking softly among themselves. To his surprise, Elrohir noted Gildor's men among them. Ausir caught his eye and nodded at him.

"I need to know where the Orcs went underground, Lieutenant," Elrohir said, deferring to the braids of rank in Linwen's hair and trying for patience.

She kept half an eye on her men as she answered. "I was sorry to hear of your loss, sir."

"Thank you." He did not know if she meant his men or Aragorn, but he was not deterred. "I was not aware that there were holes this close to the Stair."

"Sir, I have my orders."

"I am aware of that, Lieutenant. I was there when they were given to you, in fact. And I do not recall anything forbidding the sharing of a little geography. That is all I am asking for."

She shifted her weight and seemed to tighten in on herself. "It's not far," she said at last. "The old quarry, there's-"

A shrill whistle cut across her words and brought both of them up straight as if it at a call to arms.

Haldir at the lip of the dell, waiting. He beckoned with his head and strode off through the trees, leaving his company and Elrohir's no choice but to scramble in his wake.

They picked up the Orcs' trail on the other side of the Stair in the shade of a pine grove where the ground grew soft and wet: a large band, moving fast. The trail was hours old, but the heavy, resin scent did not quite mask the lingering musk.

The light under the pine trees was thick and muted: rutilant, everything glowing. Their steps fell hushed on the bed of pine needles, years-thick, and Elrohir did not have to remind the young ones behind him to be silent. The only sounds were the slither of snow and the creak of branches under ghostly weights.

Elladan kept pace beside him, his footfalls echoing Elrohir's.

Ahead of them and to either side, the Galadhrim had spread out in a loose formation, grey-clad and so silent they seemed almost to glide over the pine needled floor. Something tight eased a little in Elrohir's chest as he kept pace with them.

After a few meters the grove petered out, dropping into an old quarry. It was a place Elrohir knew for all the times he and Elladan had blocked the adit, the Orcs had always found a way to keep it open. A sickness rose in his throat as he looked down at the tumbled, stony ground, long ago scraped bare by the Naugrim who had delved in the shadow of Fanuidhol, searching for iron and coal, gems and other things of earth and stone considered treasures by some. The stones lay beneath the sky like the ribs of a deer after the wolves finished.

They picked their way carefully over a thin sheath of ice, disturbing the clot of ravens hovering about, their blue-black bodies pressed together as if for warmth. They clattered into the air, their voices echoing in the cracks.

In the shadow of the mountain, the adit looked like little more than one more crack in the stone face. The timbers of the lintel had buckled under the mountain's weight, leaving an inverted v-shaped fissure. The black pit beyond seemed to absorb all the remaining light around it, sucking everything inward.

Haldir stood to one side beside it as if waiting for Elrohir to precede him.

Elrohir almost felt like he should say something, something light-hearted or brave to the boys behind him. Instead, he adjusted the pack strap biting into his shoulders and eased himself under the timber. His boots scraped against moist stone, the tunnel ahead, lit with the last of the daylight, disappearing quickly into the dark.


	9. Chapter Eight: Moria

**Author's Notes: **For a long time, I stood with Elrohir and company on the threshold, trying to summon my courage to enter Moria. At last, I think, we have found our path. Many, many thanks to the Lauderdale for her incisive input and encouragement.

**Chapter Eight: Moria **

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.  
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars  
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,  
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth  
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;  
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day

_ -George Gordon Byron _

Beyond the entryway, darkness waited.

Elrohir fought his nerves' instinctive check and took the small hand lamp from Elladan, stepping first into the gloom. He had gone into many dark places beneath the earth and above it. A crack in a mountainside would not deter him. Not when Estel lay somewhere beneath it.

His footsteps disturbed the skeletons of leaves on the tunnel floor, the smell dank and weedy as a riverbed. Not more than a dozen paces, and the pallid light of day leeched to dusk.

Elladan was at his shoulder, his breath unusually loud in the stillness. Despite his trouble with dark, narrow spaces—even dimly lit rooms made him sweat—Elladan's face was steeled. When he caught Elrohir looking, he nodded.

The rest followed behind in single-file: Aear, Lalaith, Tathariel, Ausir and Thúrin, the three Galadhrim, their faces shadowed. Fewer than he'd thought. In the dark, last of the company, walked Haldir.

But for the creak of their leather and the whispering of their footfalls, they moved in utter silence. Already the daylit world of the Dimrill Stair seemed far away and long ago.

With one hand resting on the Môrgyl's hilt to keep it from scraping the walls, Elrohir tried not to dwell on the urgency plucking at his heartstrings. Outside, where mud and grass blade and fire sign might reveal an enemy's passing, they could have had three days before the trail went cold. Here, with nothing but hard stone to guide them, they might already be too late. Their only hope lay in that after a battle, hobbled with wounded, and unwilling captives, the Orcs would be slowed. Careless.

For now, his sword would remain unstained and sharp, and he reined himself to patience as if stalking Mirkwood's black hart. Overlooking nothing.

The tunnel sloped straight into the mountainside without check or alteration. The lamp cast a pale, silver beam a few meters ahead of his boots, picking out their quarry's trail: the dampness left by wet boots, a stone chipped and scarred. Dark, rusty smears against the wall.

After a time, the tunnel widened and smoothed until three could walk easily abreast, though they kept in file. Niches appeared at intervals to left and right, their insides blackened.

Suddenly, the roof sprang up and vanished, and a draft tossed Elrohir's hair into his face. He halted as the light plunged over a ledge of stone into a pitch. Far below, at an unguessable depth, came a churning as of water running over stones.

Further investigation revealed an underground ravine stretching to either side some indeterminate distance. All that remained of a bridge was a narrow tongue of stone and its tattered parapet. Elrohir did not set foot on it.

"Torches." Even at a whisper, his voice carried in a strange, curling way across the ravine, lingering longer than echoes should have.

One of the Galadhrim, a small fellow whose face he vaguely recognized, cast a look towards the rear of the company before swinging his pack off his shoulder. Lalaith fished a bundle from his pack, and between his flint and Tathariel's knife, they kindled a few billets wrapped in oiled rags. They searched to either side of the tunnel mouth and soon found the right-hand path tapered off against the cliff while the left revealed a sweep of broad steps, a thousand or more, leading steadily down.

Elrohir's spine prickled as he descended. The stone steps were of ancient make, worn smooth with age and sagging in the middle as from thousands of years of stone boots. Yet no cracks or water channels marred their surfaces, no gaps or splinters. Orcs did not make such roads.

A warning hiss pinned him close and tight to the wall, cutting off the lamp's light with a snap. Unsure of the threat and unable to see, he stole a glance at the Môrgyl. No hairline fraction of blue shone between locket and scabbard. Nothing. Still, he waited, holding his breath to hear better. After many heartbeats with only silence and darkness in his ears, he made to rise, annoyed that someone was already jumping at shadows.

"There is nothing there."

Something brushed his shoulder, a gossamer-touch, like the edge of a cloak or surcoat. Instinctively, Elrohir lifted his hand to ward off the saber hilt threatening to knock him in the jaw. A tinge of neatsfoot oil ghosted the air as Haldir unsheathed his _sigil _and passed light-footed down the steps. Elrohir tried to track his movements, but the thick webs of shadow obscured his sight. Though he and his brother both were elf-eyed, even elves' eyes needed something to work with. They could not see in pitch-dark without star or moon, and how Haldir managed mystified Elrohir.

"Captain must have the eyes of an owl," Lalaith murmured admiringly. "Dark's thicker than Mirkwood's southern eaves here."

Elrohir hushed him. From below came a dull thud as of a boot striking inert flesh.

A light struck in the murk, momentarily blinding Elrohir though it was little more than a rushlight. Gradually, amidst motes of seething sparks and half-imagined flickers, the bottom of the stairwell swam into view—a slab of grey stone. And an orc-shape lying at its foot.

Beside him, Elladan let out a long breath through his nostrils. "Dead."

They made their careful way down to the landing where Haldir stood beside the lifeless figure. The Orc had fallen between the stair and the threshold of an arched doorway. Elrohir knelt and, easing the lantern's shutter up a fraction, examined the body.

An Orc of small breed, long-limbed and eared, eyes too large from living in the dark: one of the usual types that loitered on the flanks of a pack and picked at the bones the stronger left. There was a mealy, scrap-seeking look to the body. Almost pathetic. But for the locks of hair looped around its belt, too fine and soft-looking for Orcs.

A heavy oaken shaft protruded from the collar. Something about it disturbed him, though he did not quite know why, except that Orcs tended to favor steel. Particularly for close work.

"Must have been quite a _quarrel_, no?" said the Galadhel Thillas, scratching his mangled ear and earning a disapproving look from his lieutenant.

"Perhaps," Elrohir said, unsmiling. It was not uncommon for Orcs to argue over plunder and spoils after their…exploits. But seldom with the threat of pursuit at hand.

Besides the quarrel, the Orc had also suffered a blow to the head, as well as—a quick palpation of the limbs revealed—badly fractured ribs and legs; they had bled little despite the fact that the bones had punched through in two places. A fall down the stairs after being struck, most likely. The left hand was also wrapped with a rude bandage, and though the body protested such handling, Elrohir managed to remove it and glimpse the maimed hand: missing its two foremost fingers, shorn off by something cleanly sharp. At least one of Imladris' defenders had avenged himself in some small way. An empty quiver also hung from the Orc's belt, and a small sheath in its boot was empty. No dagger lay near.

"He was stripped of his weapons after being slain," Elrohir noted.

"Pack as well. Kind of his shield-mates to thieve his gear before he's even stiff," Elladan said with a wry twist of his mouth.

"Waste not." Haldir lifted a small wallet from around the Orc's neck, not unlike the tobacco pouches the Dúnedain carried, though of Orc-fashioning. Serenely ignoring Ausir's raised eyebrow and Aear's scandalized noise, he slipped it into his belt pouch.

"Sir." Thillas and Linwen had returned from a brief exploration beyond the archway, and from the looks on their faces, they had found something. "Over here."

They passed into a small anteroom at the far end of which was another length of stairs, bearing further signs of flight and struggle: dropped gear, a broken sword in a corner, a smear on the curve of one of the columns flanking yet another archway even larger than the last. Above it, an archivolt vaulted, its undersides gleaming with marble carved figures and faces, empty eye sockets staring dispassionately down at the elven company.

The small Galadhel craned his neck up towards the figures, surreptitiously making the sign of the iron crown in a warding gesture. "Yon is a dark door," he said in the heavy Silvan accent of the deep-woods.

"This is Dwarf-craftsmanship, my fellow. Only the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm could claim such fine work," Ausir said, running his fingers over the carvings etched into the columns. "Not since Menegroth has there been such skill and beauty seen."

Though Elrohir privately shared the Galadhel's disbelieving look, he was eager to see what Thillas and Linwen had discovered.

In the hall beyond loomed darkness; even untrammeled, the lantern light only pushed back the wall of shadow a few meters, enough to reveal two more dark shapes slumped at the foot of a pillar as big around as a beech tree. They might have been sleeping, dreaming wicked dreams of plunder and murder and whatever else Orcs dreamt of…save for the spatters on walls and floor and the bases of the next pillars: dark, arcing spatters, black even lit.

Their hands and heads had been hewed.

There were more. A faint, rank smell like Imladris' smokehouse drains hung in the air. The lamp picked out details here and there: a clawed hand still vised around a notched and broken sword, the dull sheen of eyes—more lifeless for having once lived—or garments rent and disarranged as if by the most violent of winds, the worst horrors where the lamp could not reach.

Elrohir had stood upon many such a battlefield. Had seen death and dealt it in equal measure. But the brutal hatred etched in the Orcs' wounds turned his stomach with more than memory.

"Search them." At Elrohir's puzzled look, Haldir added, "I am fond of that tobacco."

"Make certain there are only Orcs. Count them," Elrohir said to Elladan who nodded and motioned for the Imladris' scouts to follow him with their rekindled torches.

Laboriously they quartered the Great Hall, going over every foot in ever-widening circles from the body beside the threshold, around every column, to the far southern end. Some of the bolder Galadhrim even ventured down one or two of the side-corridors.

Ten dead in all. Many hacked off at the knees and bearing the deep, incisive blows of axes, though Elrohir could not remember the Orcs bearing such during the attack in the Pass. Whatever had happened, ten or more were still missing, including their red-eyed 'Chief.' And his captives. Elrohir was not sure whether to feel relief or disappointment. He was just turning back from the southern end to look more closely at the alcoves inset into the walls when he caught sight of Tathariel and one of the Galadhrim standing nearly outside the hall.

"Stop me if you have this one heard," the small Galadhel was saying to Tathariel. "A soldier gets struck in battle, so he does, with a great arrow sticking out of his chest. His officer takes a look at him and says 'You've got an arrow in your chest, my man.' And the soldier looks down at his own self and says, 'Why, sir, so I have!'"

She laughed but hurriedly smoothed her expression under Elrohir's eye.

"This is not a time for jests, fellow. You are not in a walking party," he said sternly to the Galadhel. "If you have finished your search on this end, you may go to the other. Plenty of work for idle hands."

The Galadhel straightened and matched Elrohir's eye, "Déorian, 'tis myself, sir. Not 'fellow,' so. And I was only after making jest with the lady because she said she was feeling ill, and no blame to her. Knacker's yard as it is in here."

"Then Tathariel may stay. You, however—"

"My lord," Lalaith called from halfway down the hall. "There is one here still living."

The Orc lay in one of the alcoves, a bolt in his chest. He blinked as the lamp smote his eyes and shifted, trying to push himself up further against the wall. His progress was rather impeded by the likely mortal wound. The arrow shaft wagged back and forth with every heartbeat, making the fletching vibrate.

The space was a narrow fit, and Elrohir bade the others step back, so he could set the lantern down. "That is a bad wound," he said in the Common Tongue, crouching to partially obscure the brightness. "But it has not hit your heart, or you would be dead by now."

"Get it out."

"It is not so easy. The arrow is keeping you from bleeding. Like a finger in a dike. Remove the finger, the dike floods. So it will be. But I will help you. Remove the arrow. Stop the bleeding. You may not die. Only you must tell me what happened here and where are the captives you took."

The Orc stared at him mistrustfully, but a spasm flitted over his face, forcing the words past his lips.

"Didn't take no Elves." He swallowed with difficulty, the veins in his throat swollen and raw-looking.

"They were not Elves. They were Dúnedain. Men. You took them in the mountain passes." Elrohir drew the strap of his waterskin over his head and pressed the unstopped bottle against the Orc's lips. He twisted away. "It is only water, fool. I am your enemy, but I am not so cruel as to taunt a wounded man."

The Orc drank slowly at first then latched on greedily, water dribbling down his chin onto his tunic until he choked. Still, he growled when Elrohir took the flask away.

"Now. The captives."

"Water."

"Captives first."

Swishing the water between his cheeks, the Orc swallowed. "I remember now. Mountains. Men tried to be heroes, save a couple more of their own. Stupid twats. Didn't even see the trap we sprung on them 'til they were thick in it. We made 'em squeal before we put them down."

Elrohir stifled the heat beating towards his hands with an effort. "There was one among them. Tall. Dark like his father but with his mother's grey eyes. Of middling years though he did not look it. There was a star stitched to the breast of his cloak, and he wore a ring with a green stone."

The Orc's hands opened and closed slowly as he gave Elrohir a pale smile. "Poor lad. Our band likes Men. Good eating. Better than horse. Much better. Which one are you then? Thrasher? Or Thresher? I remember you too. Or was it the other one? Crawling in the snow. Dropped your sword, hadn't you? Zuraz had it right. You don't look like much."

Elrohir pressed his lips tight together, heat prickling up his neck and hands, which reached up and tweaked warningly on the arrow shaft.

A string of foul curses and froth flew from the Orc's lips, in which the only recognizable word was the foul-sounding 'golug-hai' used for Elves. "_Golug-hai pushdug— skai! Gazat pushdug azuzat-izish. Kul-izgu bagronk-ûr_…" Eventually, the Orc subsided into growls and mutters, groaning, his breathing ragged.

"Tell me where he is," Elrohir said again. "Tell me, and I can ease the pain."

The Orc curled over his wound, weeping under his breath.

Elrohir did not turn, though he felt the other's presence just beyond the lantern.

"I told the others to continue the search," said Haldir's voice. "You ought to join them."

"When I am finished here."

"You should let me handle this."

"I assure you that is not necessary."

"You are too close. What makes you think this creature knows anything of Estel at all? Or would tell you the truth even if it did? It would rather die for spite."

"Orc, I give you one last warning," Elrohir said. "Tell me where they are."

At that, the Orc raised glittering eyes and fixed them on Elrohir, lips pulled back from his teeth like a snarling animal, every muscle gathering as if for a spring. "_Throguat_. _Burzum throguat. _You, _golug_, and me and all. _Burzum-ûr_." Drawing himself up, the Orc spat full in Elrohir's face and wrenched the shaft from his breast with savage strength, flinging it from him as blood flowed into his tunic, drenching it dark.

"No." Elrohir clamped a hand against the wound, but the eyes were already emptying of malice.

The last quivers of the heartbeat in his fingertips, Elrohir thrust the body from him with an oath and stood. Mopping water and spittle from his face, he drew air sharply through his nose. "I know little of the Black Speech, and that which I do know is too much." His hands were wet and sticky. Without looking at them, he wiped them on his kerchief.

Haldir, his face half in shadow, was staring at the blank wall into something Elrohir could not see, and when he spoke, the words came as if out of a sunken well.

"'It devours. The darkness. That we are all for the Dark.'"

"Then we will find nothing more here."

Shaking himself free of whatever thoughts plagued him, Haldir gave the Orc's corpse a hard kick that knocked it sprawling on its face.

* * *

The battle and the dying had confused all signs of the Dúnedain and their surviving captors, and no matter how many times they searched the length and breadth of the hall, they could not find where the trail led on. But only when Elladan approached him, suggesting they take their rest for what remained of the night did Elrohir at last heed his body's weariness.

The great hall was too exposed for a suitable camp, but the Galadhrim had hunted out a room large enough to accommodate the company with only two doors, one of which could even be fastened. In the glory of the days of Khazad-dûm, it might have served for an armory. The room was longer than it was wide with a rotting board perforated with hook holes running three quarters around the wall. Whatever weaponry it had once contained was long plundered, and the wooden door opening to the hall corridor sagged on its hinges, but it would do for a night.

Elrohir made up his groundsheet beneath the rack out of habit more than desire. Tired as he was, he did not expect to sleep. Though weariness weighed his limbs and mind, anxiety gnawed at his spirit, making him restless and unquiet: a growing surety that beyond their little shelter lay a peril more than just Orcs and the dangers of the mines themselves.

If the others felt it, they looked remarkably unconcerned. Already, most of them had stretched out on their pallets and broken out their provisions, talking and jesting with Gildor's men as if with old comrades.

"Ausir, me old sweat, me old flower, I heard bandits had slain you and your man there on the Road seasons ago. And then you turn up like a pair of butterflies in a basket."

"You would have it so," Ausir said. "But I have not forgotten our wager. It's a silver you owe me. Unless you'd like the charming lady to know—"

"You wouldn't dare—" Déorian said, snapping upright on his bedroll.

"Oh, no." Ausir leaned back comfortably on his elbows. "I'm much too much a coward. But I hear pen and paper are also useful for these things."

"You old chancer. A silver." Déorian glanced appealingly at his comrades. "Must be mistaking me for a colonel, thinking I have a silver to spare. A silver. Most you would be getting is the shirt off my back, so you would, and a thump, besides."

"I always rather fancied myself in Lórien greys," Thúrin put in, plucking at his weatherworn tunic.

"What did he do?" Lalaith asked, leaning forward eagerly. He and Tathariel had readily taken to the Galadhrim out of curiosity or solidarity. Only Aear lay a little ways apart on his pallet.

Haldir flung his gear into the corner nearest the door and began rummaging through his pack, speaking over his shoulder as he did so. "I want two sentries on the hall entrance. Two at the other end of this corridor. Two hour shifts. You lot know the drill. Unless absolutely necessary, you're to remain here and quiet. If you need a piss, you take someone with you. If you're not on watch, eat, check your gear, get some sleep. We'll stay here only a couple hours. No more. Use it."

Irritated at this easy assumption of authority but unable to fault his orders, Elrohir nodded when Aear, Lalaith and Tathariel looked to him uncertainly.

They chose lots for the watch, and since most of them had not broken their fast since that morning, for a while all was quiet. Even Elrohir managed to nibble sparingly at the dried fruit and meat. The food would have to last if the search spanned longer than he hoped, and they could not hope for sustenance beyond their packs in these bare halls. Afterwards, he checked and cleaned the Môrgyl and his _sigil_, but he could not settle to sleep. He was still not accustomed to close quarters with a lot of people, and the movement and talking kept him awake.

After the sentries had gone to take up their posts, Haldir spread out all his gear and attended it carefully: oiling and polishing belt and scabbards, rubbing down the steel lockets, stropping and oiling his blades. He carried three and had laid them in front of him in order of size: the small, leaf-bladed _cú_ used for camp duties, the _sigil_—the long knife with its blacked blade—and the _crist, _the weapon the warrior chose for himself.

None of his men interrupted him, familiar enough with this ritual to know that all attempts at conversation would be met with concentrated silence. The care a warrior took with his weapons was the care he took for his life. Idle talk made for idle work.

"That is a peculiar blade your officer carries," Aear remarked; he had been watching the captain's movements closely. "An old weapon, that knife. I have never seen one blacked before."

"To be sure," Déorian said with a sly, little smile. "Captain was in the War, so he was. Go on and ask him, lad. He'll tell you all you want to know."

Linwen clipped him smartly across the ear.

To the Silvan Elves, there was only one War: the seven-year siege of the Dagorlad that had ended with the decimation of Sauron—and more than two-thirds of the hosts of Mirkwood and Lothlorien. Both Elrohir and Elladan had been warned at a young age not to ask Haldir questions unless the answers were offered first. Of all their years under his tutelage, Elrohir had heard Haldir speak of that time only once, during a night of free-flowing brandy. It was not a conversation he cared to remember.

Haldir never looked up or slowed his movements as if he were utterly unaware of their discussion. Perhaps, he was. When he sheathed his blades and fished out a slender pick for his boot lacings, Thillas raised his head off his pack. "Captain, I have a query as to the matter of our mission."

"Well?"

"While I have the utmost respect for our esteemed companions, I wondered to what purpose they've joined us. The Lord and Lady want us to take a look roundabouts and gather news of the enemy's movements, but I can't see why Imladris wants along for the march."

"You didn't tell them?" Elrohir said, with some surprise.

Haldir raised his eyes briefly. "I told them what they needed to know, just as I told you."

"The Orcs took several of the Dúnedain captive," Elladan said. "One of them is our foster brother."

"Estel," Linwen said when Thillas raised an eyebrow.

Déorian ran both hands through his hair, ruffling the strands and cut a glance at his captain. "Now you do be telling us, sir, we're to be hunting lost Men. It's sorry I am to hear of your kin, but 'tis not our duty."

"And were you reporting to the colonel, I would agree with you," Haldir said, taking out the poke of tobacco and rolling a few pinches into a thin scrap of paper. Aragorn would have cringed to see his art reduced to such crassness. "But there are times when duty cannot be determined by the Law alone. Estel is the Chieftain of the Dúnedain. The Dúnedain protect the North. The loss of such a chieftain might send its last defenders into the grass. And with the downfall of the North, it is only a matter of time before that darkness crosses the mountains, and that is when things go ill for us. Therefore, it behooves us and our duty to put forth our greatest effort for these _allies._"

He struck a flint match. Linwen cleared her throat pointedly. Rolling his eyes, he rose and stepped out into the hall before setting the fire-stick alight. "Now be quiet, and get some sleep."

Ausir nudged Déorian with a good-natured grin. "Convincing, isn't he?"

"Oh, he is a right charmer."

Eventually, the camp settled though by unspoken consent, they left a rushlight burning in a corner. The watches turned. Elrohir kept himself occupied refilling the clay dish with oil whenever the candle faded and listening to the steady breathing of his companions. Once, someone groaned in their sleep.

Though his body craved rest, he grudged it. Aragorn was a man grown, but Elrohir still thought of the serious, dark-haired child they had led from the Angle, cradled in his mother's arms. The one they had called Estel. It was that child he searched for, that child lost in the dark. And part of him could not forbid the ache of loss already gnawing at him.

"You should rest," said Elladan's hoarse voice from his nest of blankets. "It would do you good."

"I will."

Sighing, Elladan dragged himself upright and leaned against the wall beside him.

"Rumors came to Imladris," Elrohir said, "while you were abroad, of the Dwarves seeking to return to Moria. It might be we will find folk of Erebor here. Our house is known to them of old. They might lend us their aid."

"It is…possible," Elladan said. "But even if Durin's folk dwelt in these darksome halls once more, even if we could find them, I do not think Haldir likely to enlist their aid."

"The Dwarves have ever been our allies."

"Ours, perhaps. Lórien's?"

Elrohir had not forgotten Lothlórien's Sorrows after the Dwarves suddenly abandoned their ancient halls. "I care not, not if it means finding Estel."

"We _will_ find him."

Elrohir did not nod. Elladan would not see him in the dim light. "I'm going to take some air. Go back to sleep." He picked his way past the sleeping men and Haldir's empty bedroll and stepped out into the corridor, taking up the lantern as he did so.

Ausir and Thúrin were taking their turn on watch in the dark at the mouth of the corridor into the Great Hall. One hand resting with calculated nonchalance on the Môrgyl's crossguard, he waved them down as they made to rise. No, he needed no escort merely to relieve himself. Yes, he was sure. And he desired to stretch his legs a little, so if he did not return immediately, do not take alarm.

He lifted the lamp shutter a fraction to release a pale beam ahead of his steps as he strode alongside the near wall, avoiding the Orc-dead, until he came to an alcove, pausing there to tend nature's needs.

For some reason, he felt drawn to the far southern end of the hall. Aware of the sentries' eyes, he went no farther than the archway, letting his light fall over the small porch beyond. The shadows of wide stairs sank into an even deeper gloom. And yet, though the light did not reach so far, Elrohir had the strongest impression that something waited there. Something that loved neither Elves nor Men. A creeping dread stole over him. He eased his hand down to loosen the Môrgyl in its sheath and backed from the stairs, the hidden menace they held.

On the way back to his comrades, he caught sight of Haldir, sitting near the wall upon one of the more supine dead. The fragrance of _galenas _illuminated the air. Elrohir left him to his thoughts, and bidding Ausir and Thúrin seek sleep for what little remained of their vigil, he took their place. From the mouth of the corridor, he watched the amber light glow and dim until it went out, and darkness fell across the hall.

**Author's Notes: **I'm so happy to be getting another chapter out at last! I know I deserve to be roasted on a spit. But I have Chapter Nine already planned and in the works. As always, many thanks to those who read and review.

Best,

Marchwriter


	10. Chapter Nine: Descent

**Author's Notes: **Hurrah! No six-months-before-an-update for me this time!

**Chapter Nine: Descent **

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"  
Was there a man dismay'd?  
Not tho' the soldier knew  
Someone had blunder'd:  
Theirs not to make reply,  
Theirs not to reason why,  
Theirs but to do and die:  
Into the valley of Death

_ -Alfred Lord Tennyson _

At Elladan's step, Elrohir finished cinching his belt tight across his hips. The Môrgyl hung heavy on his left side, but quiescent for now. The hall about them was softly lit from high windows on the eastern side.

Elladan stretched with a stifled groan, joints and leathers creaking. "I do believe even the bones in my buttocks have gone flat from lying on that infernal stone."

Though Elrohir's own shoulders were knotted from an hour's sleep on the truly inhospitable floor, he managed a teasing smile as he plucked a scrap of some unidentifiable thing from his sleeve. "What? All this time spent in Gildor's company, I would have thought your buttocks accustomed to chafing."

Elladan shot him a sly look then laughed.

Elrohir's mouth twitched, but he did not laugh. One of the slain lay quite close propped against a pillar. The lines in the visible half of the face, the ruck of mouth and brow seemed disconcerting in their cast. Almost Mannish. "We cannot linger here any longer."

"Haldir suggested last night we pair off and search outward from here. Mayhap one of the side passages—"

"No," Elrohir said, halting Elladan mid-yawn. "To wear out our eyes on bare stone here will cost us time we cannot afford. No wind to carry scent. No water to leave prints. No soil or leaves to displace. Lest we chance across some item they left behind we will find nothing. Either we choose a path as best we can, or we go back. And I will not go back."

Besides, there was only one road for them. The windows made no effort to touch the arch by the southeastern stair. A hole of Night.

Exactly the kind of refuge an Orc would seek.

Elladan was watching him closely, but Elrohir feigned absorption in the rune-etched cornices of the pillars and did not meet his eye.

"You should talk to Haldir," Elladan said, choosing his words with obvious care. "Fully half the company is his or will follow him if he chooses a different course. And he _did _agree to help us, after all—"

"A man rendering aid merely to assuage his conscience is hardly grounds for merit."

"If you think that is the only reason for his actions, you are gravely mistaken," Elladan told him, a hint of bite in his tone. "And you mistake my point. Whatever the reason, he is here. You have allies with you, brother. You don't have to do this alone."

But he had sat in the grey room, alone—even Elladan, unable to abide where she tossed and turned and cried in her sleep.

A beat of silence passed in which neither of them looked at one another, the ghosts of their silent disagreements almost as tangible as the dead between them. Their former levity might have belonged to another world for all that remained of it.

"Let us go," was all Elrohir said. "The sooner we decamp, the sooner we can get on the march."

The others, bleary yet, were talking softly amongst themselves when he entered. Aear, Lalaith, and Tathariel, sitting on their packs, looked up expectantly. The Galadhrim, however, lounged about still, breaking their fast and chatting carelessly—Haldir conspicuous only by his absence. At least, he could put the matter to the others first without prolonged debate.

"We will take the southeastern passage," Elrohir said.

Eyeing him dubiously, Déorian stretched his legs out along his pallet, every line of his body radiating challenge. "Hard to march long hours on an empty stomach, so it is. Besides and begging your pardon, but guesswork seems a mighty fine thread to hang our hopes on. What gives you the surety that southeast is our road?"

"Listen here, _runda," _Aear said to Déorian, his shoulders squared as at a bout in the training ring. "You will address our officer with respect or not at all. Furthermore, it is not your place to question a commanding officer's orders."

"That'll do, Lieutenant," Elrohir told him, a little belatedly.

"Not _our_ commanding officer," Déorian retorted, ignoring Elrohir and making to rise. "And you'd best be keeping a civil tongue in your head, _Lieutenant_—"

Linwen seized him by the belt and hauled him back down with a hard glance. "Don't strain yourself, Déorian. You may damage something. Forgive him, sir. He is prone to irritability when he has slept little."

Though she called him 'sir,' which everyone did when they couldn't tell him apart from Elladan, he recognized a reasonable face and nodded at her.

"Your pardon if I overstep, sir," Linwen said with deliberate politeness. "But it seems strange to me to choose a road without knowing whether or not we have the right of it. Do you not think, perhaps, you are overeager because of the…nature of the captives?"

Elrohir answered politely in kind. "You are concerned that because one of the captives is my kin, I may be acting in haste?"

"It is not for me to question your judgment," Linwen said, but she did not lift her gaze from his face. She had very green, very penetrating eyes. "But I would hear what our captain says on the matter."

She turned her head towards the doorway.

Haldir stood there, Elladan at his shoulder. Elrohir's belly clenched and his chin lifted instinctively.

"We were after discussing our road, Captain," Déorian said, emphasizing the last word ever-so-slightly. "There seems a mite disagreement as to—"

"Orcs will not linger in the upper halls," Elrohir continued as though there had been no interruption. "Too exposed, too much daylight. They will seek out a place of safety. Somewhere below. The road that leads south then is our most favorable course. The others lead only east or back towards Eregion. If any one of you has another suggestion—" He eyed Déorian—"I would hear it. But my instinct tells me that that is our road. Or I know nothing of Orcs."

Haldir said nothing to this. Indeed, he seemed scarcely listening, cradling a dark wood mazer—decidedly _not_ regulation— against his thigh.

"Well, I admit, I am uneasy at the thought of us separating," Ausir said when the silence stretched a little too long. He rolled his pallet up and nudged Thúrin to do the same. "We must move on, that's plain. The enemy may already guess pursuit lies behind. Lingering here increases the risk of bringing them down on our heads ere we find anything. Or losing ourselves if we did."

Elrohir turned to his three, Aear standing very straight, echoed by Lalaith. Tathariel looked uncomfortable but rose just the same. If Haldir meant to cow him with silence, he was mistaken. He would take his men and go, if need be.

"If you haven't eaten, do so on the march. And go carefully with the water. I do not know what streams may be in these mines, but it is likely not wise to drink from the same wells as Orcs."

"Captain?" Linwen prompted, her jaw set, tension in her shoulders.

Déorian and Thillas were now looking at their officer too to see how he would take this. When Ausir and Thúrin, their gear half in hand, did the same, Elrohir could no longer ignore the pressing silence.

"Well?"

Roused from some deeper thought, Haldir stirred at last and lifted his gaze to Elrohir's face. Despite himself, Elrohir stiffened. He had a sneaking feeling—though he could not have said 'how' (other than that Haldir had a penchant for hearing and knowing things he oughtn't) that the captain knew or guessed what had passed between he and Elladan in the hall a moment ago. Whatever his thoughts were on the matter, though, he kept them well-buried, his face smoothed of expression.

"Estel cannot wait," Elrohir told him. It felt manipulative—evoking Aragorn's name like that—but necessary. If anyone would understand instinct and urgency, it was this man who knew darkness.

Haldir lifted the mazer to his lips, drained it, and glanced round once at his men. "Well. What are you waiting for? Fetch your gear."

Linwen and Thillas leapt up though Déorian muttered darkly under his breath as he dragged his pallet off the floor.

Elrohir stuffed the last of his things into his pack and swung it over his shoulders, pointedly ignoring Elladan's reproving stare burrowing into the back of his neck.

The lantern in his hand cast a chill light down the steps of the southeastern passage. Beneath them the dark lapped at the edges of the bottommost stair, profound as the depths of a well. Almost as if at an unspoken command, they halted.

_Darkness devours_, the Orc had said. And not without some truth, Elrohir mused, grimly. Of every tale he had ever heard, he had yet to find one where the noble hero found anything good waiting for them in the dark of the Enemy's lairs.

Still, one could hope.

A hand against the cold smoothness of the wall, Elrohir led the way down, a swooping in his stomach as if he were falling into deep water.

* * *

Caves did not trouble him: their low ceilings and jagged corners, the damp. But at least, they usually had an outlet, some path back towards daylight, some ending. But Moria's mines wound without end, branching into other corridors and passages. Endlessly dark and empty.

As they descended the path grew more and more treacherous, forcing them to tread slowly and cautiously. Uncovered wells and vents opened across their path, sometimes supported by a sagging board. Sometimes water surged up from unknown depths, spilling across the passageway.

Then they struck water.

Elrohir halted on the lowermost of a wide span of stairs and lifted the lantern a little higher, trying to discern their path. The light revealed the edges of tunnel walls and a low ceiling, but the tunnel stretched onto into interminable shadow. He shivered, a hard plunging in his chest.

"Orcs wouldn't have come this way," Déorian said behind him, a note of derision in his tone. "Even they're not daft enough to try to swim this."

"Perhaps it isn't so deep," Lalaith murmured. He plucked a small stone from the detritus at the stairs and, before Elrohir could tell him otherwise, dropped it into the pool.

The stone vanished with a solid _thock_, ripples wavering outward. The dark water lapped against the stair, the walls, disturbed. A thrill of foreboding rolled down Elrohir's spine like a heavy wind before a thunderburst, but in the briefest of instances, where the darkness seemed to ease, a strange, ghostly light flickered at the far end of the flooded chamber. But Elrohir blinked and wasn't sure he had seen it.

"Do not do that again," he said, realizing only then that he was whispering. "I need a torch."

"What are you doing?" Elladan demanded as Elrohir calmly unbuckled his sword belt and laid it on a dry step then shrugged out of his surcoat and unlaced his boots. Water-sodden clothes pulled a body down worse than any current.

"You cannot think to—"

"It is not all that deep," Elrohir told him, rolling his breeches to the knee. Elladan was giving him that same, wide-eyed look he had that youthful spring when, for a taunt, Elrohir had ventured onto the ice-locked Bruinen.

"A torch," he said.

Ausir handed it to him, smoldering. To Elrohir's astonishment, he too was stripped to breeches and undershirt, his dark hair back from his face with a leather thong.

"I am going with you. You'll need someone expendable with you, after all."

Elrohir opened his mouth to say he would manage, but Ausir was already thrusting his gear into a surprised Thúrin's arms.

Ausir patted his cheek, serenely ignoring the panic-stricken look he received in return. "You look after this lot here, my dear. Keep them off each other's throats, yes?"

"Keep watch," Elrohir said to Elladan who reluctantly nodded. Near the top of the steps, Linwen was bent in close conversation with her captain, but neither looked up.

The steps were slick underfoot as he eased down with a hand on the wall. Oddly warm, like bathwater, the water crept past their knees, their thighs. The floor was smooth and slightly gritty. All around outside their oval of light the dark pressed. Water dripped from somewhere ahead of them.

The torch cast a flickering light across the water, giving it an oily sheen as they moved off from the others. Though rectangular and broad enough, the ceiling hovered but a few inches above Elrohir's head. Ausir, the taller, had to stoop to avoid cracking his head.

They turned a corner, and the water, now at their waists, gathered itself, pushing against them, against the walls, whispering softly in a hundred different voices. It whispered of secret places only it knew. Of pouring and churning in caverns deep where no light ever reached. Gnawing things in the dark. Drowning halls. Drowning…

Suddenly, his foot sank beneath the floor. As if he'd missed a step going down. He jerked, the torch lying from his hands. It struck the wall with a crack and hissed out in the water. For a horrible, protracted moment, the hole sucked at his legs, a hungry maw lifting to swallow him. Then a hard arm gripped his and tugged him bodily upward. Ausir hauled him in, his legs scrabbling desperately amidst stone, water, dirt, barking knees and elbows until he struck the wall

"Take heed. There's a hole there," Ausir's voice said gently.

A strange, wild, gasping laugh pressed against his teeth, his fingers digging into the wall. The water rocked against his neck now, pressing him to the wall as if in safety.

"I'm afraid we've lost our light," Ausir remarked from somewhere above him. As if Elrohir hadn't been the one to drop it.

Without the torch, the darkness swarmed around them, impenetrable.

"Perhaps we ought to return to the others," Ausir suggested, and Elrohir could feel the other's gaze trying to find him in the dark.

He rose, hair lank against his nape. The whirling tug of the hole was still too close. "No. A little further…I see something. Light."

The strange gleam he had spotted from the stair grew brighter as they groped their way forward. A pale bluish light like stars at midsummer. It was coming from above, glimmering from nooks and crannies in the ceiling, so bright he could make out the weave of Ausir's shirt.

His foot caught, sending him stumbling up onto a flat, almost dry shelf. Free of the water at last, Elrohir sank onto the stone, his back against the wall. He braced his arms on his knees, his breeches clinging clammy and uncomfortable to his legs. His hands were trembling. He fisted them closed in the crook of his elbows so Ausir wouldn't see.

Wringing water from his shirt, Ausir canted his head to one side, making him look more hawklike than ever. "You are afraid."

Blue-edged wavelets still surged up the slope of their shelf.

"I nearly drowned when I was a boy," Elrohir said, the words emerging sharper than he's meant them to sound. "The ice was thin on the Bruinen, but we thought it sturdy enough—my brother and I—for sport. He saw the shadow in the river and would not go. I did."

The ice had given way. One moment, firm underfoot. Then, iron-grey water swarming over his head. A shock of cold, bone-deep. It froze breath and flesh. His very heart shuddered with it. The dark, churning void poured into his mouth, up his nose, into his lungs. But he couldn't cough. Couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. The current's insistent tug like his sister at play. The weight of his clothes, dragging him down.

He didn't remember much of what had happened afterward other than the unbearable tingling of reawakening limbs and his feet floating like dead-white fish in the bath.

"I didn't even learn to swim until I was nigh a decade past my majority." He laughed, self-deprecating. "A young man's folly."

"I have heard this story once," Ausir said. "And never before nor since have I heard Haldir confess himself so afeared as when he pulled you from the river."

Strong arms about him. His head breaking the surface. Coughing, retching. A white face swimming into focus. Haldir had heard Elladan's screams.

Slowly, Ausir crouched beside him so that he was eye-level with Elrohir, elbows on his thighs for balance. The sleeve of his undershirt had ridden up a little, and there, half-hidden in the crook of his forearm, was a dark spray of ink. Rays, like the spokes of a wheel or the points of a star. Something prickled at the back of Elrohir's mind. Something familiar.

"What is that?" Elrohir asked, glad for the distraction.

Ausir glanced at his arm then at Elrohir. The eldritch glitter from the ceiling haunted his eyes, made them gleam deep and dark caverns. Elrohir realized with a small shock that Ausir was old. Old as his father and Gildor were old with the summers and winters of Ages to his name.

Then Ausir smoothed his sleeve over the mark and smiled a little wryly. "A young man's folly. If you are feeling steadier, we should start back. The others—"

"Why are you here? Forgive me my unseemly curiosity," Elrohir amended as Ausir stiffened at his tone. "I know well Gildor's penchant for asking few questions and giving no answers. Haldir is no better. But we have a journey before us, perhaps a long one. I would know what manner of men walk beside me."

"What manner of men," Ausir repeated softly, not quite meeting Elrohir's eyes though it was bright enough to see one another. "If you know Gildor as you say, you know what manner of man he leads. We—or most of us anyway—are _hecili._" The Quenya rolled from his tongue only as one who had lived in a world before it had receded into dusty tomes.

Exiles. Dispossessed.

Cold crept over Elrohir's skin at the realization, hard on the heels of memory: a picture he had once seen in his father's study. A charcoal sketch of Maedhros. The blazon on his surcoat. The sleeve of Ausir's shirt had shifted again, but the shape—the star of Fëanor—could not be made out beneath the weave.

"Yet we know loyalty, honor, courage. Blood ties. They are not merely words to us or a dusty creed we once lived by," Ausir said, lifting his chin as if reading disapproval in Elrohir's silence. "And Thúrin and I never could refuse Haldir anything, if he asked. We have ventured with him on many a perilous journey. Though never on one so dark. And we too have endured our own searches for the missing. I hope that this one will not be in vain."

Elrohir did not ask any more. He did not want to know the names of the lost even if Ausir had been disposed to talk of it. Ghosts only haunted you if you allowed yourself to think of them.

"I do not doubt—" he started, but Ausir gestured suddenly for silence, his gaze tracking over Elrohir's shoulder.

A whisper against the back of his neck, cool and steady.

Cautiously, Elrohir unfolded himself. In the dark, wanting only freedom from the clinging water, he had not remarked it at first. The shelf did not end, as he had first thought, in blank wall, but in a narrow passage that trailed into a half-sunken cavern. Strands of those blue lights hung from the ceiling like cobwebs, some almost to the floor in places. But other parts of the walls and ceiling were dark, the cobwebs torn and tattered.

"We need to fetch the others."

"Môrgyl…"

Ausir was standing stiff, his hand groping for a blade he did not carry. However, the Môrgyl was still strapped to Elrohir's side, waterlogged but there. And glowing.

Off to their left, a red light had appeared, growing steadily brighter and nearer, accompanied by the clash and yammer of rough voices. Many voices.

"_Yrch_."

* * *

**Author's Notes: **I was afraid this chapter either read too slow or too rushed, but I knew if I tinkered with it anymore, I wouldn't post for another six months. Thoughts, comments, questions, criticisms—all are welcome. This is turning into one of the darkest stories I've ever written (physically, emotionally, thematically: thus the long stretches between updates). You'll see what I mean in the chapters to come.

**Translations: **

_Runda—_**Quenya (from Ardalambion)**_**. **_"a rough, unshaped piece of wood." In my personal canon, if one uses this to refer to a person, specifically if a Noldo uses it towards a Silvan, it has connotations of the addressee being an uncivilized and uncouth country bumpkin. Yep, Elves have a word for "redneck" in my canon.

_hecili_**—Quenya (from Ardalambion) **"waif, one lost or forsaken by friends, outcast, outlaw." In this case, Ausir refers to a specific band of "outcasts"-the Exiles of Valinor, led by Fëanor and cursed by Mandos for their rebellion and quest for revenge which is told in the Silmarillion. There's a reason Gildor doesn't ask questions of those who join him.

_Yrch__**—**_**Sindarin. **Orcs (of course!)

10


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